President Donald Trump is asking Congress to suspend the federal gas tax until the Iran war is over.
Not hard at all. And he might have found a rare moment of bipartisan compromise in Washington.
Trump has a knack for taking “free money” off the table, politically.
Newsom continues to resist calls to suspend or lower the state’s gas taxes.
These are the highest gas taxes in the country, at 61 cents per gallon. And that’s before sales tax and other fees.
California’s gas taxes are so unpopular that voters recalled a Democrat who voted to raise them in 2018.
They’re so unpopular that the attorney general at the time — a man named Xavier Becerra — had to mislead voters who wanted to vote to repeal them.
Opponents of the gas tax placed a ballot measure, Proposition 6, on the November 2018 ballot.
Becerra renamed the proposition to obscure the fact that it lowered the gas tax. He wrote a deceptive description that just focused on the supposed loss of transportation funding that would result.
This is how he described it: “Eliminates recently enacted road repair and transportation funding by repealing revenues dedicated for those purposes.”
A judge ruled that Becerra’s language was misleading. But an appeals court said he had wide discretion.
The misleading words made a difference. One poll showed only 39% of voters favored Proposition 6 as Becerra described it. But 50% of voters in the same poll favored repealing the gas tax.
Fast-forward eight years, and Becerra is still defending the gas tax. He’s one of the only candidates for governor, even among Democrats, who won’t commit to repealing it.
In most states, that would be political suicide. But Becerra apparently believes if Trump does it, it’s wrong.
Newsom would do well to follow the president’s example. If you really want to make an impact on “affordability,” suspend or lower the state’s gas tax. At least until the Iran war ends.
Who knows? The effect could even raise revenue for the state, over time, by boosting economic growth.
In the meantime, Newsom should also accelerate local oil and gas production. And he should stop fighting the Trump administration on offshore oil.
These are all political no-brainers. Some Democrats have already started figuring that out.
But apparently Newsom and Becerra love gas taxes more than they love California drivers.
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