Carter's decontrol and windfall plans stir a storm in Congress
As gasoline nudged toward $1 per gal., and growing numbers of service stations around the country rationed sales to $5 or less per customer, Congress began battling over Jimmy Carter's plan to raise fuel prices still higher. Already the strategy is drawing heavy fire from left and right for being everything from a giveaway to Big Oil to a bureaucratic interference with private business to a dangerous new fuel for inflation.
The sharpest attacks are against the package's two most important parts. They are to phase out domestic oil price controls beginning in...