Following up on Saturday’s post on the gas tax holiday proposed by Senators Clinton and McCain:  after Clinton on Sunday punted when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked her “Can you name one economist — a credible economist — who supports the suspension?” (video here), the Freakonomics blog reports today on the various unsuccessful efforts to locate an economist to defend the idea:

This makes me proud to be an economist. In any election silly season, you can usually find someone willing to support just about any kind of nonsense. …  But it appears that the economics profession just isn’t that silly.

Bryan Caplan (George Mason) at EconLog offers to "Shill for Hillary":

Hillary’s having trouble finding an economist to back her suspension of the gas tax. But she need look no further – I’ll rise to the challenge. Here’s my economic case for the tax cut:

1. The American people want to "do something," and Hillary’s tax cut will at least do little harm … [and has] a good chance of politically crowding out price controls and worse.
2. If (due to highly inelastic short-run supply) 100% of the tax cut goes to producers, that’s not a bad thing. It helps to balance out the long-run disincentive effects of populist measures. …
3. The short-run elasticity of supply in probably near-zero for the world market, but Hillary’s tax cut affects only the U.S. So as I argued previously, American consumers will at least get a moderate piece of the tax cut: If one part of the world cuts taxes and the rest doesn’t, then gas flows into the lower-tax area, and consumers in that area benefit. …

With arguments like these, I doubt that I’ll be getting any phone calls from Hillary’s team. Her proposal is defensible; it’s just not defensible using arguments that the American people wants to hear.

(Hat Tip: Chronicle of Higher Education.)