President Joe Biden told reporters that he’s considering a federal holiday on the gasoline tax, possibly by the end of this week.
“Yes, I’m considering it,” Biden told reporters after taking a walk along the beach in Delaware, according to FOX News. “I hope to have a decision based on the data — I’m looking for by the end of the week.”
The Biden administration has been looking for ways to spare the American public from higher prices at the pump, which began to climb last year and surged after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
The gas tax adds 18.3 cents per gallon of gasoline. The national average price for a gallon was $4.98 on Monday, according to AAA.
Biden administration officials suggested on Sunday that the administration could suspend the federal gas tax, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying on ABC’s “This Week” that it’s “an idea that’s certainly worth considering” and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm saying on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the idea was under evaluation, according to USA Today.
“Part of the challenge with the gas tax, of course, is that it funds the roads, and we just did a big infrastructure bill to help fund the roads,” Granholm said. She added that “if we remove the gas tax, that takes away the funding that was just passed by Congress to be able to do that.”
The Biden administration has already released oil from the U.S. strategic reserve and increased ethanol blending for the summer, in addition to sending a letter last week to oil refiners urging them to increase their refining capacity. So far, nothing has helped.
GasBuddy took to Twitter on Monday, saying “for the first time in nine weeks, the national average price of gas has dropped. It might not feel like much, but prices are back under $5/gal on average, and could drop as much as 15-30¢/gal more by Independence Day.”
GasBuddy data is compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country.
