Route Fifty
By Daniel C. Vock DECEMBER 7, 2021 Florida's governor is backing the idea of suspending his state's gas tax for six months. Hello and welcome back to Route Fifty's Infrastructure Update, I'm Dan Vock. Today, we're looking at a surprising proposal from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants the state legislature to basically suspend the state's gas tax for half a year. DeSantis is a Republican and his plan mirrors other GOP efforts to slash taxes. But some Democrats—including one of DeSantis' opponents in next year's gubernatorial election—are also voicing interest in giving motorists a break at the pump. The idea of rolling back gas taxes is rare, and experts on both ends of the political spectrum raise questions about whether it's a smart policy choice. For the last decade, state lawmakers have been far more willing than their federal counterparts to raise fuel taxes to pay for roads and other transportation programs. Perhaps the closest other states have come to doing something like what DeSantis has proposed is when Illinois temporarily suspended its sales tax on gasoline 20 years ago, and Indiana took similar actions at the time, according to Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank.
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