Just cutting people checks is such a bad idea.
“Obama simply asks that big oil companies contribute a reasonable share of the windfall profits they receive from high oil prices over the next five years to pay for emergency assistance for families right now,” the campaign says."
No, what he is asking is that the taxpayers, through taxes, fund this emergency assistance, with the hopes that the money will be eventually replaced over five years.
The oil companies are not just going to fork over the entire amount 21 Jan 09. The government will waive its magic credit card and hit the mythical ATM machine and the cash will flow.
Did it ever occur to Obama that the slicky lawyers of the oil companies will just move the money so that it does not register as profit but as something else such as reinvesting it in their company (which is what we want). But by then the government will have already sent out the bribe checks and will need to come up with the cash from non-oil companies.
Hmmm I wonder where the government can get that money from??????