The suggestion is comical.  I'm 60 years old, and when I was in my early twenties, the same thing happened.  There will always be booms and busts in the energy sector.  Back then I wrote my first and only letter to my fed rep Goodling, suggesting the same thing be done to reduce the deficit.  I got a nice Dear John letter back, instructing me that for every Dem given a dollar, they spend a buck twenty-five, and every Republican, they spend a buck five.  He told me my suggestion would only make federal fiscal matters worse.  He was a wise and experienced man.

Also, the Wall Street Journal had a piece in Fri's edition, stating that if the Fed's quit using the trust fund to pay for public transit for six US cities (whose riders pay no $ into the trust fund when traveling by public transit), to pay for building rail trails, landscape projects, etc, the trust fund would be sufficient to pay for the projects it was designed for.

Also, oil is projected to return to $80-100 a barrel w/I 18 months, as drillers are laying down their rigs at these prices.  Any new, additional taxes would still be yolked around our wallet's neck.  Instead of $4 a gallon gas, we'd pay $4 plus the new taxes.