Democrats Propose Sending Americans $100 Monthly ‘Gas Checks’

As the cost of gasoline continues to squeeze American consumers at the pumps, a trio of Democrats in the House of Representatives have proposed an idea to send Americans $100 monthly "gas checks" to help ease the pain. It is certainly an interesting idea that would help in the short term, but the long term problems are the ones that actually need to be addressed, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains how that can be done in a fair and equal way.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A trio of Democrats in the House of Representatives have proposed this week, a plan to send $100 monthly gas checks to American citizens to help ease the squeeze that we are feeling at the pump. They are representative Mike Thompson of California, representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois and representative John Larson of Connecticut. It would provide hundred dollar monthly checks to individuals, $200 to couples, while the national gas price average is at $4 a gallon. Households would be able to claim another extra $100 for each dependent they claimed on their tax returns. So that is a big deal. So for a married couple with two kids, 400 bucks a month, of course, assuming you don't hit those income thresholds that for some reason are also a part of this. $150,000 for couples, you don't get the money, 75 for individuals, you make too much to qualify. But it's a decent plan, right? It's a very solid bandaid on a bigger problem.

Problem is eventually you gotta rip that bandaid off and that wound is not gonna have healed yet. This is a temporary solution to a problem that has years long implications. So as much as I do support this and I'd be really happy if they did it and I think it is not a bad idea. You know, before I get into that, let's also talk about the fact that yeah, sending, you know, people hundred dollars a month, 200, maybe 500 a month, depending on if you're married and have kids right before an election, yeah, pretty transparent what's also happening here. So let's be clear about that. Like we know for a fact you wanna do this because there's an election coming up and you wanna put money in people's pockets. Again, I'm fine with it because this goes to lower income Americans. They need it, political pandering, a hundred percent, but also sorely needed. But what is really needed in this country and this is my bigger point here.

Is some kind of in incentive program, excuse me, from the federal government to switch people off of gasoline altogether, right? Like I said, this plan to send out a hundred dollar checks. This is a bandaid. What we need to do is remove the infection, remove the soar, fix it up, heal it, stitch it back together. And we do that this way. This a plan that I have come up with here. The federal government needs to make a significant investment into the production of electric vehicles here in the United States. Not just to ramp up the production, but also to ease the cost to consumers because that's another big drawback. People are like, well why don't you just get an electric vehicle? Cool. You got $70,000 you're gonna loan me so I can go buy it. No you don't. So stop saying stupid things. But if the federal government comes in with this grant money that I'm talking about here, giving it to the automakers if they agree to produce more electric vehicles, that would lower the cost because the government would be absorbing the overhead cost instead of the company.

Negotiate there from the price, you bring the prices of affordable electric vehicles down. Second, full tax write off. I believe if you buy an electric vehicle, you should be able to write off the entire cost of it, the entire sales cost on your taxes. That is another huge incentive to get people to switch to electric. Also work with the banks, 0% interest. it doesn't matter your credit score, you buy an electric vehicle, 0% interest. These are all.