It’s food stamps.  Except, you know, for gasoline.

Because it’s all bread and circuses folks.  It’s not about leadership.  About about which political party or politician can promise voters the most stuff paid for with other people’s money.

As the U.S. economy teeters on the brink of recession, Democratic leaders are revisiting an idea born of the Great Depression: gas stamps to help Americans cope with high fuel prices.

The proposal to subsidize fuel costs for lower-income families and individuals would almost certainly be popular with white, working-class voters and could boost Barack Obama’s appeal with that critical voting bloc in this year’s presidential election.

Democratic lawmakers and their leaders say they are serious about including it in a second economic stimulus package expected to move this month. Meanwhile, Republicans ridicule the idea as a return to welfare-state politics, which they say characterized the Democratic Party before Bill Clinton.

“It’s certainly under consideration,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told The Hill on Thursday afternoon. “It would be like food stamps for those people who need help.”

Gas stamps would work like traditional food stamps, which some Americans have collected since the 1930s. They would be used, however, to pay for regular unleaded instead of meat and potatoes.

Under one version of the proposal, a person earning up to $31,200 or a family of four earning up to $63,600 could receive government payments totaling $500 for gas.

This is a fairly ironic policy for Demcorats, who are supposedly interested in reducing carbon emissions, to propose.  Giving Americans entitlement money that they can only used to purchase gasoline will do nothing except encourage more driving.  Which, in turn, will only exacerbate high gas prices by increasing demand for gasoline.  Something that would, naturally, require more “gas stamps.” One thing that has actually caused people to drive less, and consume less gasoline, has been high gas prices (the bureaucrats whining about lost gas tax revenue prove it).

That’s the rationing effect of the market.  If supplies go down, or if demand goes up or even if both happens higher prices prevent people from using more gasoline than they need.  If the price of gas goes high people will conserve fuel.  But a gas entitlement would change all of that.

Which is pretty much how all entitlements work.  If you give out tuition entitlements for higher education the price of tuition goes up, which then necessitates more tuition entitlements.  If you give out heating entitlements people run up higher heat bills, which in turn drives up heating bills and ultimately increases demand for more entitlements.

It’s all a vicious cycle, and exactly why we should expect that people pay for their own gas.  And education.  And heating bills.  Etc.

Plus, how much money is this going to cost us?  Don’t just think of the cost of the “gas stamps” themselves (though with nearly 251 million car-owners in America it’d be a hefty price tag), but of the cost of the bureaucracy it would take to distribute this entitlement.  And administer this entitlement.  And prevent fraudulent abuse of this entitlement.  The cost would be enormous, and once people started getting “free gasoline” they’d never, ever want it to go away and no politician would ever have the intestinal fortitude to take it away from them.