By Mike Lillis, The Hill
House Democrats are lining up against a gas tax holiday, creating additional barriers for President Trump as he struggles to battle inflation and the rising costs at the pump.
The president this week proposed a moratorium on the federal tax, currently 18.4 cents per gallon, in an effort to provide some relief to drivers as fuel costs continue to spike in the midst of the war with Iran.
But Democrats are warning that eliminating the gas tax would undermine the highway trust fund, at the expense of infrastructure projects, without much guarantee that the savings would be passed down to consumers. They say the better strategy is to tackle the problem at its root by ending the conflict with Iran.
“His policies on energy and the war in Iran drove gas prices up, so now he’s saying: Let’s get rid of the tax rather than dealing with the real problem that he has created without a strategy,” said Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. “The trust fund is already ailing, because it just doesn’t collect the kind of revenue it once did.”
“My concern is that you’re going to take a lot of money away from the federal government when we’re already running a large deficit,” said a second Democratic lawmaker. “And 18 cents can vanish in a second.”
The resistance comes as gas prices have shot up as a result of trade disruptions resulting from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, which was launched on Feb. 28. On Wednesday, the nationwide average hit $4.51 per gallon, according to AAA, up from $4.13 a month ago and $3.16 a year ago.
The trend has had the downstream effect of increasing costs on countless other consumer goods and services, including groceries and air travel. The spike in fuel costs was a major factor driving inflation up to 3.8 percent last month — the highest rate since May of 2023, according to the Labor Department — and it’s creating a huge liability for Trump and Republicans as they race to keep control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Facing high disapproval ratings, Trump on Monday proposed a solution, saying the administration would push for a temporary gas tax holiday to help ease the pain on consumer wallets.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Trump told CBS News. “Yup, we’re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we’ll let it phase back in.”
But to adopt that policy, Trump will need Congress’s approval. And while a number of the president’s Republican allies are jumping on board to support the plan, GOP leaders in the Capitol are approaching much more cautiously.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the tax moratorium “may help,” but has not endorsed the concept or committed to moving any legislation to the floor. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was even more skeptical, proposing that “the best way” to bring fuel costs down would be to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has been essentially locked down amid the war.
“We do have a Highway Trust Fund,” Thune added, “and it does perform an important service in making sure that we’ve got highways and roadways across our country that are serviceable.”
Democrats tend to agree. They had been cold to the idea of pausing the gas tax when it was proposed by President Biden in 2022, when gas topped $5 a gallon. Now, with a Republican in the White House, that opposition comes even easier.
“So it’ll cut money for projects to rebuild roads and bridges? No. End the war. And if you want to do a gas tax holiday, you’ve got to find a way to offset it,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
“I’m a liberal, and I care about the deficit and the debt,” he added. “These other guys don’t give a s—.”
Not all Democrats oppose the idea of pausing the gas tax. In fact, several have introduced legislation of their own to do just that.
Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) is one of them. His bill aims to address some of the concerns surrounding the strategy. It backfills the loss in highway fund revenue, for instance, by tapping into the government’s general fund to ensure that infrastructure projects aren’t halted. And it includes penalties for oil and gas companies that don’t pass the savings on to drivers.
Pappas acknowledged that 18 cents is a “modest” reduction given the current price of a gallon. But for consumers who are getting squeezed by rising costs on multiple fronts, he argued, any assistance will help.
“They’re experiencing sticker shock, and while cutting it would be modest, we should be doing everything possible to lower prices,” said Pappas, who is running for the Senate in November.
Most Democrats, however, are much more critical. They’ve hammered Trump for launching the Iran conflict to begin with, characterizing it as a “war of choice.” Now that the conflict has led directly to a spike in consumer costs, they say the best solution is simply to end the war.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, compared the situation to her experiences advocating to end the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s.
“They found that in El Salvador, there were bodies floating down the river. And people were wringing their hands about why the bodies were there. My point was: Go to the [source] of the river and figure out who’s throwing them into the river. OK?” she said.
“In this instance, let’s focus on why this war of choice has created the economic chaos that it has in people’s lives,” she continued. “Whether it’s gas, whether it’s home heating oil, whatever it is — end that. End that, and we will get back on course.”
