Gas tax holiday not the answer

High gasoline prices are hurting a lot of people. Adding insult to injury are two presidential candidates playing politics with the problem by suggesting impractical "gas tax holidays" - removing the 18.4 cents in federal taxes per gallon of gas that is earmarked for highway work.

Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton know better but they are playing to the voters. At least Barack Obama has the courage to say that it isn't good policy.

Let's say you fill up once a week, about 18 gallons at the time. That's $1.80 per fill-up or about $30 or so over the proposed summer "holiday." Not much- less than a half a tank for a lot of vehicles.

Stateside, some well meaning but ignorant Republican legislators are proposing the same thing, taking off the 16 cents state tax for the summer.

Even if you put the two taxes together, it wouldn't amount to that much for an individual. But collectively it would be crushing for important highway projects that would fall way behind or be axed entirely. It would probably cost a lot of highway construction workers their jobs thereby contributing to unemployment.

And who's to say the greedy oil companies wouldn't raise their prices by the amount of the cuts to take advantage of the situation?

A bolder and more far sighted approach might be to actually consider an additional gasoline tax to help fund research for alternative energy sources so we aren't so dependent on petroleum. However, that is about as likely as the gas tax holiday.

Jim Cox

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