API Runs Ads Against Price-gouging, Windfall Profits Tax

The American Petroleum Institute has hit the airwaves to beat back calls on Capitol Hill to create a windfall profits tax or make price-gouging a federal crime, airing radio ads in “most major media markets” during this week’s congressional recess to remind consumers about the negative impact Congress had when it tried to temper gas prices in the 1970s.

The ads take a not-so-nostalgic view of the disco era to warn voters of the long lines at the pump when Congress tried to reduce the cost of gasoline by taking on oil-producing countries with a series of price controls and energy taxes, an API spokesman said.

An announcer encourages listeners to "tell Congress to leave relics like gasoline price controls and policies that discourage domestic energy development where they belong, back in the 1970s,” according to excerpts published in the Houston Chronicle on Friday.