Here are all my posts regarding swapping gas taxes for the worker’s portion of Social Security taxes. Once again, Extreme Wisdom is ahead of the curve.

Holman Jenkins is one of my favorite Wall Street Journal columnists. He writes from a “libertarian” perspective that I don’t always agree with, but he cuts away at the absurd “sound bite” nature of “conventional wisdom” surrounding most issues.

Here, he nails it regarding Detroit.

A Car Wreck Made in Washington

The wrong folks were in the witness chairs in last week’s congressional hearings on auto doom. A fantastic moment was Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch assailing Rick Wagoner about whether GM was asking China for a bailout too. The implication seemed to be that GM can’t afford its inflated UAW pay packages because it’s squandering money to build cars in China.

Mr. Wagoner mildly answered that GM’s China operations are profitable. They actually help to underwrite the massive losses in the U.S.

Mr. Lynch showed no sign he was actually listening, having illustrated his disapproval of foreigners. He didn’t ask the obvious question: If GM can make cars profitably in China, why doesn’t GM import them to the U.S.?

Why indeed? Because the UAW won’t let them, that’s why. This isn’t to forgive the management of the big 3 for incompetence. Like all toady business weenies these days, they would rather cave to Unions than to fight them. They deserve to go under based upon their cowardice alone.

What you wouldn’t know is that the single biggest factor in preserving the UAW’s monopolistic power has not been labor law but Congress’s fuel-economy rules. These effectively have required the Big Three to lose tens of billions making small cars at a loss in UAW factories. Not only were the companies obliged to forgo profits they might have earned importing such cars, but CAFE deprived them of crucial leverage to control labor costs by threatening to move jobs to a factory in Spain or Taiwan or Poland. (Let’s face it, that’s what other successful U.S. manufacturers do.)

All this was deliberately designed to give the UAW the means to defend uncompetitive wages in the face of a globalizing auto business. It had nothing to do with making sure Americans have high-mileage cars. Yet not a single legislator last week breathed a hint of recognition that something might be behind Detroit’s woes other than an improbable series of “stupid decisions” (as another Massachusetts congressman put it) by 18 CEOs over 30 years.

Caving to DC and Washington WAS and IS a stupid decision. But next comes the REAL fun part. First, people are starting to realize the DC based bureaucracy is throwing everything out of whack. Next, everyone is starting to talk about a GAS TAX.

[Obama] asked on Monday for Detroit to deliver a “plan” somehow to reconcile, at long last, the fantasy life of Washington, with nobody losing a job, with super energy-efficient cars, and yet somehow all this being done at a profit to Detroit.

Here’s a plan, but it requires Mr. Obama to play a role too, finally relinquishing such chronic free-lunchism where autos are concerned. He should simply get rid of the CAFE rules and impose a gasoline tax to move the country to a “new energy economy,” if he really believes in panicky climate predictions and/or that “energy independence” would be a net improver of American welfare. And be prepared for Detroit to shift jobs offshore if the UAW won’t concede competitive labor agreements.

Not acceptable? Here’s an alternative plan: Buy out the UAW with taxpayer dollars and free the Big Three to staff their factories with nonunion workers the way Toyota and Honda and BMW do. Last week’s Hill circus notwithstanding, the negotiation that really needs to take place now is between Democrats and their union allies. The Big Three executives are just in the way.

As I said, Jenkins has a great way of cutting through the nonsense.