McCain's gas tax proposal would 'do little,' House Dems say

US Sen. John McCain's proposal to suspend federal gasoline taxes this summer would do little good but cause significant harm, two leading Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said.

April 16, 2008

2 min read

Nick Snow
Washington Editor

WASHINGTON, DC, Apr. 16 -- US Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) proposal to suspend federal gasoline taxes this summer would do little good but cause significant harm, two leading Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Apr. 16 (OGJ Online, Apr. 15, 2008).

The proposal, which the presumed 2008 Republican presidential nominee outlined during an Apr. 15 economic address at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, would save most drivers less than $30 for the entire season while costing states $12 billion in highway construction, highway safety, and public transit funding, Chairman James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the committee's Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

"This shortfall will have very real, devastating effects for hundreds of thousands of American families. McCain's proposal will eliminate approximately 300,000 family-wage, highway construction-related jobs. It comes at a time when, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.2 million construction workers are already unemployed. In fact, the construction sector has the highest unemployment rate (12%) of any industrial sector," they said in a joint statement issued by the committee.

Suspending the taxes of 18.4¢/gal on gasoline and 24.4¢/gal on diesel fuel from Memorial Day to Labor Day, as McCain proposed, also would harm efforts to reduce highway congestion by eliminating necessary infrastructure improvement investments, Oberstar and DeFazio said.

"Despite its stated purpose, the proposal would actually do little for consumers. Instead, it is likely to turn into just another multibillion windfall profit for the oil companies," they said. This essentially happened in 2001, when Illinois and Indiana suspended their motor fuel sales taxes, they said.

"The McCain proposal is nothing more than an attempt to find a simple sound bit instead of a realistic solution," Oberstar and DeFazio maintained. "It brings to mind the words of H.L. Mencken: 'There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.'"

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