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Candidates from *both* parties are calling for the federal and/or state gas taxes to be suspended, which makes sense from an election POV but seems like a TERRIBLE idea from a fiscal/budgetary (and also environmental) POV. Even if you support doing so, when exactly would they be reinstated?

If you leave it open-ended, you give Republicans a MASSIVE in-kind donation for 2028, since Dems would be put on the spot to "vote for a huge tax hike on the middle class" etc etc even if they're just restoring to to where it is now. If you put a hard deadline on it...when would that be, exactly?

For that matter, it wouldn't do much good in most states anyway. The federal gas tax is 18.3¢/gallon. The average price of regular gas has gone up $1.50 since Trump decided to invade Iran for no particular reason, and could go up another $0.50 or more by Election Day.

There are 32 states where the gas tax is $0.33 or less, so suspending BOTH the federal AND state gas taxes *completely* would only cancel out about 1/3 of the price hike to date, and only 1/4 of what it's likely to go up to by Election Day... ...while wiping out all of the road maintenance revenue.

Plus, as several folks have noted, there's no way of forcing the gas companies to pass the savings along to the customers anyway! So you could end up wiping out billions of dollars in federal *and* state revenue without reducing the price of gas one cent (they'd probably drop prices *somewhat*).