Gubernatorial campaigns float gas tax suspensions as gas prices tick up across Michigan

Filed 2h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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The Entertainer

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The U.S. National Archives · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

Michigan's gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Jocelyn Benson and Republican John James, have both floated suspending a gas tax, though they disagree on whose. Michigan gas averages $4.60 to $4.63 a gallon, among the highest in the country, with prices climbing since the U.S. entered conflict with Iran and disrupted oil markets.

James wants both the 18-cent federal tax and the 52.4-cent state tax suspended, calling on Michigan Democrats to declare a state of emergency. Benson wants only the federal tax suspended, warning that cutting the state tax would blow a hole in the road-funding budget, and has called on Congress to end the war she blames on Trump.

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall opposes any state gas tax suspension, warning it would jeopardize road funding, while Benson's running mate Bridget Brinks said this week she'd like to 'keep that door open' on the state tax, a shift from the campaign's earlier position.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Two candidates, two tax cuts, and not one dollar of actual relief has hit anybody's tank yet. It's easy to promise to suspend somebody else's revenue stream when you're not the one who has to explain the pothole later. Watch whose tax gets cut and whose stays put once the votes are counted, that's usually where the real position was hiding.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: The Entertainer · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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