Should the U.S. raise the gas tax? Most Americans agree the U.S. needs to reduce its dependence on foreign oil; the question is how to do it.

• Author: Krauthammer, Charles
• Position: DEBATE

YES Now that we have lived with $3.50-a-gallon gas, $3 seems far less outrageous. That gives us an opportunity to permanently depress demand for gas by locking in higher gas prices with a tax.

Let's put a floor at $3 a gallon. Every penny under $3 that the market price goes should be recaptured in a federal gas tax so that we pay at least $3 at the pump.

Why is this a good idea? Because it's the simplest way to induce conservation. Higher prices will make people alter their buying habits. It was the higher fuel prices of the 1970s and early 1980s that led to more energy-efficient cars and appliances, which so reduced the demand for oil that prices fell through the floor. By 1986, oil was $11 a barrel. Then we got complacent and resumed our old wasteful habits. Now, oil is around $60 a barrel.

The worst part is that much of this $60 goes overseas to foreigners who wish us no good: Saudi princes who subsidize terrorists and the nuclear-hungry, death-to-America Iranian mullahs, for example. This is insanity.

It makes much more sense to reduce consumption, drive the world price down, and let the premium we force ourselves to pay at the pump (which begins the conservation cycle) go to the U.S. Treasury: If the price drops to $2, plow that $1 tax right back into the U.S. economy by reducing other taxes.

The beauty of a higher gas tax is that it would make fuel-efficiency standards unnecessary. Just let the market decide. Consumers are not stupid. Within weeks of Hurricane Katrina, SUV sales were already in decline and hybrids were flying off the lots.

--Charles Krauthammer

Washington Post columnist

NO Americans are increasingly concerned about the rising cost and availability of gasoline, a commodity that is so essential to the American way of ]fie. At a time when high prices at...