Much ado has been made recently about the “gas tax holiday” idea being thrown around by Senators Clinton and McCain as a means of providing relief from high gas prices this summer. According to these two presidential candidates (and pretty much no one else), suspending the 18-point-something cents per gallon federal tax for a three months shall lather a great salve upon the American people, and make the whole spectre of having to mortgage one’s first born to fill up the Maibatsu Monstrosity go away.

This really isn’t true; of course. According to pretty much all of the really smart economists, the average American will see a savings of approximately 30 bucks (assuming that suspending the tax actually reduces prices at the pump, and doesn’t just further line oil company coffers) during the course of the holiday.

Also of note is the fact that the federal gas tax proceeds are used primarily to maintain roads and bridges. No need to worry about those, right?

I just did the math for my household – given our average rate of gas consumption in both our vehicles, and assuming that the (rounded up) 18.5 cent reduction makes it directly to the pump, we’d save (with rounding) about $30.30. That’s not even a lunch out for our family (our bill at Panera bread after Andrew’s baseball game on Saturday was about $33.00).

What’s happening here is that Clinton and McCain are just hoping that people aren’t really paying attention to details, figuring they can win over voters by promising them “cheap gas” for their summer family vacations (which they probably won’t be taking anyway, since everything else costs so much), and pointing out that Senator Obama opposes the tax holiday (the smart, common sense position).

They’re counting on the fact that nobody notices the fact that this proposed tax holiday (which they probably aren’t in a position to enact anyway) doesn’t really give the “working folks” whose votes they are courting much of anything; they only want people to see that McCain or Clinton want to save “real Americans” money on gas, and “elitist” Obama doesn’t, and use that erroneous simplification to score political points with barely-concealed pandering.

You know, if all it takes to win someone’s vote is a vague promise of 30 bucks or so, I’m with Amanda; it it weren’t patently illegal, we could set up a fund or something….

What’s really bothers me here is the up-until-this-point wonkish policy mind of Hillary Clinton tossing the facts and analysis under the bus with this statement on ABC News this weekend when asked whether she had any economists who’d vouch for her idea:

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to put my lot in with economists.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had quite enough of people in power blatantly ignoring factual analysis for the last eight years, thanks.