Washington – A Republican proposal to provide taxpayers with $100 rebates to compensate for higher fuel prices appeared all but dead Tuesday, with leading congressional Republicans saying that it had quickly fallen flat.
“I just think that trying to satisfy voters with a $100 voucher is insulting,” Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, said. “Over the weekend, I heard about it from my constituents a few times. They thought it was stupid.”
Other Republicans in the House and Senate did not mince words either. “It was a silly idea,” said Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, who predicted that the rebate would not be in the final energy package when it reached the floor.
On Monday, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, announced that he was dropping a broad tax proposal from the leadership’s eight-point package of energy initiatives. The resistance to the rebate meant that two core elements of the plan were off the table or teetering on the edge.
As a result, Republicans will be trying to regroup on energy measures while under steady attack from Democrats who say the ties between Republicans and the oil industry have contributed to increasing prices at the pump.
The harsh reaction to the rebate was also a setback for Frist, who last week led the rollout of the energy plan and defended it in an interview on CBS News on Tuesday.
“I think what is clear to the American people is that we have no silver bullet,” he said.
“We do have this short-term rebate of $100 per person,” he added. “That’s the federal taxes that are paid over the course of a year per person on average.”