Gov. Gretchen Whitmer continued to call for a federal gas tax holiday Thursday. That’s as AAA listed Michigan’s average gas price for a gallon of unleaded at around $4.50.
Many state lawmakers and candidates for office are calling for a suspension of Michigan’s state gas tax to lower costs for drivers.
Prices have spiked since February, when Iran closed a global shipping lane in response to U.S. and Israeli bombing campaigns.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, Whitmer placed responsibility with the federal government.
“The federal government needs to fix this. The federal government needs to stop, not just end the war, but also give people relief right now,” Whitmer said.
The federal government charges about $0.18 per gallon of gas and $0.24 per gallon of diesel. The math of a gas tax holiday for a mid-sized car owner with a 16-gallon tank works out to about $2.88 in savings for a full tank.
Michigan, on the other hand, charges a tax of about $0.52 cents per gallon. Whitmer said she’s not ready to comment on proposals to pause the state’s tax.
“We have done a lot to put money back in peoples’ pockets, got rid of the 6% sales tax that you see on gas, and we’ll continue to look at other ways that maybe we can get people relief, but I’m not going to weigh in on something that may or may not ever see my desk,” Whitmer said.
Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives tried last week to force a vote on proposals to suspend the state’s tax but failed. The Republican leader in that chamber reportedly said he wouldn’t entertain the measure without a way to replace missing revenue.
The Senate did not pass any gas tax holiday legislation while it met in Lansing Thursday.
Michigan’s fuel tax pays for road repairs. Lawmakers celebrated it as a major win when it passed last year.
Now, industry groups are issuing warnings to lawmakers about interfering with it.
In a statement, the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association (MITA) suggested the state could lose hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue -- and shed important jobs -- through a three-month pause.
"Every dollar of the gas tax has a name and a face attached to it. It's the equipment operator in Gaylord, the flagger in Kalamazoo, the truck driver in Saginaw, and the laborer in Detroit who get up before dawn to make our roads safer," MITA vice president Rob Coppersmith said in a statement.
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