McCain suggests longer gas tax holiday

A temporary suspension of the federal gas tax won't actually benefit consumers, but now John McCain says it might need to last even longer than the three months he'd originally supported.

Published July 18, 2008 5:58PM (EDT)

Via my friend Steve Benen, I see that John McCain said on Thursday that his proposal for a three month holiday from the federal gas tax might not go far enough.

"I think we ought to seriously look at whether we need to have it be longer or not depending on what the economy (does)," McCain said. "I think we have to consider all options but the fact is we need a gas tax holiday. We need it, we need it, we need it very badly. The Americans that are hurt the most are low income Americans that are driving the oldest automobiles."

The truth is McCain can propose making the holiday as long as he wants, but the consensus among the experts on the issue is that the holiday simply won't help consumers. As I've noted before, the only person it might truly benefit is McCain, who could get some political advantage out of it.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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2008 Elections John Mccain R-ariz.