President Joe Biden is hoping to do what he can to bring some relief to Americans at the gas pump. Biden said he would make a decision by the end of the week regarding whether he’ll ask Congress to suspend the federal gas tax.
Biden also is urging oil companies to increase production, though executives in the industry like the CEO of Chevron say they’re not the ones to blame for high prices.
Leonard Steinhorn, CBS political analyst, said on Total Information AM that the move might be more symbolic than a valid way to help people out with gas prices.
“There's only so many arrows in the President's quiver to do this. So he's going to Saudi Arabia to try and get them to increase production,” Steinhorn said. “He's trying to put pressure on the oil companies basically to produce more to increase capacity using the bully pulpit to push them along.”
Additionally, he said, Biden is considering suspending the federal gas tax, which is about 18 cents per gallon, and potentially asking states to suspend their gas taxes too, which usually are around 38 cents per gallon. Those add up to nearly a dollar in savings per gallon of gas. But, Steihorn said, there’s some unknowns, like if all states will comply, and if gas companies will do what Biden wants them to do.
However, Steinhorn added, there are complications with the plan — like how states will deal with all that lost tax money.
“The gas tax provides the majority of federal funding to build and maintain highways,” he said. “So you suspend the gas tax for these three months of peak summer driving, it's going to cost about $10 billion.”
Steinhorn said Biden has said he’d find other ways to compensate for the lost revenue, but hasn’t mentioned specifics.
In Missouri, the legislature has seen some House bills that would have paused the collection of the state gas tax. Representative Adam Schwadron sponsored one of those bills in March. He said though his bill didn’t make it through the process, he’d “be happy to do it again any day and every day.”
Missouri’s gas tax holiday would’ve had similar effects to a national one — that means MODOT would be losing money. Schwadron said he had a plan for that.
“MODOT would have been okay because we would have replaced the funding with the budget surplus that Missouri has,” he said. “And the gas stations, I learned how they pay taxes on that — they prepay the taxes when they are buying the tanks of gas at the rack, as they call it, and then they collect it as they sell it from the people. So it was an interesting process to learn about that. But it would have been a win-win-win for everyone.”
Schwadron also said that as a small business owner, he’s had to work in his household to reduce spending, and knows many other Missourians are facing the same problems.
“We're getting hit from all sides, whether it's the increase in fuel or the increase in food,” he said. “We also have two daughters that are in summer camps this year. And so it's just hitting us from all around. So we're just trying our best to tighten up our spending.”