Why the Gas Tax Holiday is Stupid

A ‘gas tax holiday‘ is stupid because it won’t do anything. The federal tax on regular unleaded gas is 18.4 cents/gallon. That’s less than 5% of a $3.75 gallon of gas. If you drive a car with a 25 gallon tank (that’s a pretty big tank) it will save you exactly $4.60 on a full tank. If you fill up once a week for the 15 weeks of the proposed holiday, you will save $69. That’s an approximate monthly savings of $23. If $23 dollars a month is making a big difference in you budget then you have bigger problems than paying the taxes that pay for the roads you travel.

I used to have a lot more respect for John McCain. But this is an example of the same old Washington DC ‘look like you’re actually doing something‘ play. By his campaigns own estimates it will reduce transportation funding by $6.8 billion. Isn’t transportation infrastructure underfunded as it is? Didn’t we have a BRIDGE COLLAPSE in Minnesota last year? I’m glad that Obama opposes this. At least one politician is being intellectually honest about the costs and benefits of this. It’s pandering of the worst kind: claiming to help ‘working families’ while not putting enough money in their pockets to even buy lunch. I’m not surprised at that Hillary Clinton has joined McCain in this endeavor. If they really wanted help ‘working families’, how about cutting the ethanol subsidies that are helping to drive food prices through the roof?