Oil Tax

Without reciting the familiar reasons oil prices are rising (and are likely to continue inching upward), I must ask why we sit back and do nothing about it?

Wouldn’t now be an excellent time for the United States to impose a $5 charge for each barrel of foreign oil being imported? By doing so we could:

1--Exert pressure on OPEC to sign a treaty guaranteeing a reasonable price for their oil for the next 10 years or possibly longer.

2--Immediately reduce our crushing debt by applying foreign oil taxes against it until a treaty with OPEC is signed.

3--Head off the inevitable “oil crunch” and inflation that otherwise awaits us three or four or five years down the road.

4--Strengthen our domestic oil production sufficiently to make us less reliant on foreign petroleum imports.

JOHN C. CHAMPION

Encino