Unless you are fortunate enough not to rely on a car for your day-to-day needs, you might have heard that oil is well on its way to $120 a barrel. This means we can expect $4.00+ gas this summer, and as much as $7 per gallon if when oil reaches $200 a barrel. American's aren't happy about the current gas price situation, so politicians have been obliged to come up with ways to win our hearts, and hopefully elected offices in November.

President Bush went old school, suggesting drilling in ANWR. Aside from the multitude of reasons environmentalists abhor that idea, the truth is that it would take years to get the oil out of the ground. Americans are all about instant gratification, which explains why presidential contenders John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both suggested repealing the federal gas tax between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The federal tax adds 18.4 cents to every gallon of gas to cover the federal highway budget. Hillary suggested recouping the lost revenue from the oil companies, while McCain vaguely asserted the money would come from trimming other federal programs.

Senator Obama has dismissed suspension of the gas tax as a gimmick, saying it would only save Americans about $30 and not solve the root cause of rising energy costs (we did the math: you'd need to buy about 163 gallons to save $30). Of course, since Obama had a legitimate point and would not resort to a band-aid to solve the problem, he's been pilloried by the McCain and Clinton camps.

It seems that while in the Illinois legislature in 2000, Obama voted to suspend the state's 6.5 percent gas tax, but refused to make it permanent, saying then, as he is now, that consumers did not save enough money to make the tax repeal worth it. We're not quite sure how McCain justifies referring to this as "flip-flopping" considering that Obama evaluated his initial position, found it to be wrong, and has stuck with the enlightened position for the past eight years.

The Maverick, on the other hand, knows a thing or two about changing one's position. Anyway, Bush actually agrees with Obama on this one, which may be the first and last time we write such a sentence.