How to deal with astronomical gas prices? That issue erupted today among the two candidates vying for the 25th congressional seat. And stark differences emerged between the two. Sweetland began by saying small businesses in central New York are hurt bad by the ever rising cost of gasoline and now, he says it's making the price of everything we consumer go up. Although he says he supports alternative sources of energy, Sweetland wants to immediately expand domestic exploration and drilling where we know there are large reserves. Maffei, meanwhile says windfall taxes should be imposed on "big oil's obscene profits"
"The difficulty with opponent Sweetland's argument," Maffei said, "is he says do what the oil companies want and somehow, that'll help consumers . I don't believe we can do that any longer, we can't be both with big oil and with consumers," Maffei said.
Earlier in the day Sweetland said "Windfall profits of oil companies. Yeah and oil companies are making a lot of money. On the other hand, I don't think any of these folks behind me will disagree that, if oil companies are taxed more heavily , they'll just say, OK," Sweetland said.
This is certainly one issue where there's a clear philosophical difference between the candidates and how they would address this issue.