Waiting To Celebrate a Gas-Tax Holiday? Do Not Hold Your Breath
If you’re hoping for a break in prices at the pump in the form of a federal gas-tax holiday this summer, you might want to give up on the idea.
One of the ideas backers, GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to be losing interest in the concept.
"Although Sen. McCain believes enactment of the gas-tax holiday would be very difficult to accomplish,” says a spokesman for McCain, “(he) will continue to fight for relief from high gas prices for the driving public."
Talk of the holiday has all but ceased in tax policy circles, according to Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. It's unclear if it's a serious proposal, Toder says, "in terms of anything real that could possibly happen."
At least four state legislatures this session have considered enacting their own summer gas-tax holidays, according to Kate Marks, Energy Program Director at the National Conference of State Legislatures. The states are North Carolina, Missouri, New York and Louisiana.
The economics of a gas-tax holiday are skewed to favor the government, not consumers, says Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany, NY. Some experts say the federal gas-tax holiday would have saved consumers only $60 for the summer.
– By Ed Coury, senior editor and Midwest bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal Radio Network, Dow Jones & Co., and a reporter for WWJ Newsradio 950. Portions of this report were published by Dow Jones Newswires.
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