Gasoline is not that expensive. One would argue that right now with prices in the United States as the highest ever. According to AAA the average regular gas price nationally is currently $4.31. Now, surprisingly this is lower than the $4.32 posted yesterday. This is the grade of fuel that cars made 2001 and older must use.
Personally, I drive a car from 2000, I get 27 MPG, and usually am happy with that. Just so we have a reference that is $.15 a mile. The gas prices one year ago would have brought that down to $.10 That is a 50% increase in one year. That means when a low to medium income household budgets for gas, they now must increase that by 50%.
Now we get to the meat of this issue. Taxes, the same issue our forefathers threw tea into a harbor. The issue that started the American Revolution. These taxes were levied on luxuries like molasses and tea. The molasses tax was $2 a gallon, and the tea tax was $8 a pound. Now that is a lot for back then, that is an equivalent to a 47% increase to green tea today, and a 18% increase on our basic bottle of molasses. Something similar to the gas price increase in the modern era.
The current Federal gas tax is $.18/gallon and the average state tax on gas is $.30/gallon. Let that sink in. That’s not even counting the diesel tax which is higher in both. I have not studied the economic repercussions, but as an emergency act, one we have seen all too much recently, we could relieve the gas tax, to ease economic downturn. We have seen markets correct recently amid upheaval; this could help the American economy recover during the immediate emergency. Relieving the tax would leave us at $3.836 per gallon to bring us down to pre-2016 levels. This would relieve about $162 million dollars unneeded taxes on the American people.
Now I ask you. Does $162 million sound like a lot anymore? When trillions and billions of tax money are given away, we must realize what is necessary, and what is socialist spending that is no longer viable with China chasing on our heels of GDP growth.
As of November 15, 2021, we have $4.6 Billion tied up for “Energy community revitalization program”. This program buried under a mountain bureaucracy, is for the repurposing oil wells on federal land. So, if we have $4.6 billion set up to pump oil from Federal land, why are we short on oil? Why are we setting aside 28 times the yearly tax income from gas to revitalize oil wells that are not running?
Right now, the Biden administration has no answers to high gas prices. Americans are paying 1.5 times what they were last year at the pump. Putin is making deals with China, and Europe is running out of petroleum. The world is in an energy crisis and Biden makes sure that his people are getting 11% pay raises. This must stop if our economy will ever recover.
