Upping the Ante
Apr 25th, 2006 at 2:31 pm by Susie
Democrats are set to introduce a measure that would create a “federal gas tax holiday” by eliminating the federal tax on gas and diesel for sixty days, RAW STORY has learned.
The measure, proposed by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), would reduce the cost of gas by $0.184 per gallon and the cost of diesel by $0.244 per gallon. The move, aides say, will provide $100 million dollars per day in relief.
Democrats say the money will be made up by cutting six billion dollars in tax breaks to oil firms. Currently, the money from the federal gas tax goes to the Highway Trust fund.
The Democrats’ move come in the wake of two decisions by President Bush today — one, to temporarily relax environmental regulations in an effort to speed up delivery of fuel and dampen prices, and two, to halt delivery of oil to the U.S. strategic petroleum reserves.
What a good idea, that, not filling the petroleum reserves. I mean, it’s not as if a powerful hurricane might come and blow away our gas reserves… oh. Never mind.
of course that measure had to originate in jersey!
crude reserves are actually currently at their highest levels in 30 years, but our president is stripping away every environmental reg he can, isn’t he? and i suspect that we’ll see the effects of this in the next several hurricane seasons…
Obviously it is stupid to stop filling the strategic reserve — but decreasing any petroleum taxes, even in the short term, is also a step in the wrong direction.
We want to decrease our consumption of liquid fuels, duh. And we want to start doing so now, while the pain is still relatively minimal, rather than later, when becomes agonizing.
yeah, i agree with ralph. a gas tax holiday is a bad idea, even though it would help many individual families. we should be increasing gas taxes to discourage fossil fuel consumption.
closing tax loopholes on oil companies is always a good thing, however.
Two cents a gallon?????????????
Reducing or eliminating the gas tax is one of those grandstanding populist ideas for which Dems are rightfully ridiculed. The Federal gas tax should be increased steadily over time in order to incentivize conservation and efficiency and to keep a larger portion of the increased costs of petroleum in the US.