A federal gas tax holiday introduced in Congress on April 29, 2026, would put roughly $35 back in the average family’s pocket over five months. That works out to about $7 a month, less than a fast-food combo meal, and it has trucking companies and road builders warning that the trade-off is not worth it: the suspension could drain billions from the Highway Trust Fund, the federal account that bankrolls road and bridge construction in all 50 states.
The bill, H.R. 8572, titled the Gas Prices Relief Act of 2026, would zero out the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal excise tax on gasoline and the 24.4-cent-per-gallon tax on diesel for a defined window. The text includes no mechanism for replacing the lost revenue, a gap that has put the bill on a collision course with the industries most dependent on federal infrastructure dollars.
A tax rate frozen since 1993
Congress last adjusted the federal gas tax when President Clinton signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act in 1993. In the 33 years since, construction costs have more than doubled, vehicles have grown significantly more fuel-efficient, and a rising share of new cars run on electricity rather than gasoline, all of which have chipped away at the Highway Trust Fund’s purchasing power.
A Congressional Research Service report, R48472, documents that erosion in detail, drawing on FHWA Highway Statistics and Congressional Budget Office baseline projections. Since 2008, Congress has authorized roughly $275 billion in general-fund transfers just to keep the trust fund solvent, according to CBO analyses. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law added another round of supplemental funding but left the underlying tax rate untouched. H.R. 8572 would now pause collections entirely, pulling revenue from a system already propped up by borrowing.
What families would actually save
The math is straightforward but modest. A household burning about 40 gallons of gasoline a month, roughly the national average, would save approximately $7.36 each month, or $35 to $37 over the full five-month window. For context, retail gasoline prices routinely swing by 50 cents or more per gallon in a single quarter based on crude-oil markets alone, meaning normal price volatility can easily erase or exceed the holiday’s benefit in a matter of weeks.
There is also no guarantee the full 18.4 cents would reach consumers. Research on state-level gas tax suspensions, including a widely cited 2008 study by Joseph Doyle and Krislert Samphantharak examining the effects of gas tax moratoriums in Illinois and Indiana, found that a significant portion of the tax cut was captured by sellers through wider margins rather than passed through to drivers. Economists at the Penn Wharton Budget Model raised the same concern during a similar federal proposal in 2022, noting that pass-through rates depend heavily on local refining competition.
State gas taxes, which averaged about 32 cents per gallon nationally as of early 2026 according to the American Petroleum Institute, would remain fully in place. Drivers in high-tax states like California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois already face combined state and local fuel levies well above a dollar per gallon in some cases, making the federal holiday a relatively thin slice of their total burden at the pump.
Why trucking and construction groups are pushing back
The American Trucking Associations and the Associated General Contractors of America have fought gas tax holidays before. During the 2022 debate over a similar proposal, ATA publicly warned that suspending the federal fuel tax would “defund the Highway Trust Fund” and jeopardize projects already under contract. AGC raised parallel concerns, noting that contractors working on multi-year federal-aid projects depend on predictable reimbursement schedules tied to trust-fund solvency.
The stakes are higher now. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, state transportation departments are managing a larger pipeline of federally supported projects than at any point in the past decade. A five-month revenue interruption, even if Congress later backfilled the gap with a general-fund transfer, could inject uncertainty into federal payment timelines. For contractors carrying payroll and equipment costs on active job sites, that uncertainty translates directly into financial risk and, in some cases, delayed hiring or deferred bids on new work.
The diesel side of the equation matters, too. A long-haul truck burning roughly 20,000 gallons of diesel a year would save about $4,880 over five months at the 24.4-cent rate. That is meaningful for individual carriers, but ATA’s position has consistently been that reliable infrastructure funding matters more to the industry’s bottom line than a temporary fuel-tax break, because deteriorating roads increase maintenance costs, lengthen transit times, and reduce the useful life of equipment.
Rural communities face a particular bind. They tend to drive longer distances and would save more in absolute terms from a gas tax holiday, but they also rely most heavily on the federally funded roads and bridges the Highway Trust Fund maintains. A funding disruption that delays a bridge replacement or highway resurfacing project could cost those communities far more than $35 per household in longer detours, accelerated vehicle wear, and safety risks.
No CBO score, no offset, no Senate companion
As of late May 2026, H.R. 8572 has no Congressional Budget Office score estimating its fiscal impact, no revenue-replacement provision in its introduced text, and no companion bill in the Senate. The bill has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee, but no markup date has been announced. The Trump administration has not publicly endorsed or distanced itself from the legislation.
Without a CBO score, the precise revenue loss remains an open question. Annual federal fuel-tax collections totaled approximately $43 billion in fiscal year 2024, according to Treasury data. A five-month suspension, assuming consumption patterns hold roughly steady, would cost the Highway Trust Fund somewhere in the range of $15 billion to $18 billion. Actual figures would depend on driving behavior during the suspension window and on whether lower pump prices encouraged additional fuel purchases, a rebound effect economists call the “demand response.”
Congress could, during committee markup, attach a one-time general-fund transfer, a temporary surcharge elsewhere in the tax code, or additional borrowing authority to cover the gap. None of those options appears in the bill as introduced, and the political appetite for new offsets is unclear in a Congress already navigating a broader fight over tax policy and the federal deficit.
Why gas tax holidays keep failing
Federal gas tax suspensions have been proposed repeatedly over the past two decades, and they have consistently collided with the same arithmetic: the per-family savings are too small to reshape household budgets, while the revenue loss is large enough to rattle the infrastructure pipeline. The 2022 proposal stalled in the Senate after drawing bipartisan skepticism. A similar idea floated during the 2008 presidential campaign was dismissed by economists across the political spectrum, including then-candidate Barack Obama, who called it a “gimmick.”
What distinguishes the 2026 version is the backdrop. The Highway Trust Fund is carrying heavier obligations under the infrastructure law. Construction material costs continue to climb. Electric vehicle adoption is steadily shrinking the gas-tax base. And the 18.4-cent rate is worth less in real terms than at any point since it was set more than three decades ago. For families feeling squeezed at the pump, $35 over five months is real money, but it is a fraction of what most households spend on fuel in a single month. For the industries that build and maintain the country’s roads, the risk is that a brief holiday becomes one more crack in a funding structure that was already struggling to hold together.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
