{"id":22515,"date":"2026-05-11T20:47:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-wants-a-gas-tax-holiday-republicans-will-hear-him-out-thune-says\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T20:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:47:24","slug":"trump-wants-a-gas-tax-holiday-republicans-will-hear-him-out-thune-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-wants-a-gas-tax-holiday-republicans-will-hear-him-out-thune-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump wants a gas tax holiday. Republicans will \u2018hear him out,\u2019 Thune says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Senate Majority Leader John Thune<\/a> offered a lukewarm response Monday to President Donald Trump\u2019s suggestion that the federal gas tax should be suspended \u2014 even as several GOP lawmakers embraced the idea<\/a> amid a global oil supply crunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve not in the past obviously been a fan of that idea,\u201d Thune told reporters. \u201cBut, you know, I’ve got some colleagues out there who think it’s a good idea, and so we’ll hear them out.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the war with Iran keeps millions of barrels of oil from transiting the Strait of Hormuz daily, Trump endorsed the idea of a gas-tax holiday during a Monday CBS News interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to take off the gas tax for a period of time, and when gas goes down, we\u2019ll let it phase back in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thune has long been cool to suspending the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gasoline tax, telling reporters earlier this year that he didn\u2019t know that it \u201cis going to lower [gas prices] by a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that reopening the Strait of Hormuz would \u201cnormalize gas prices as much as anything\u201d and that suspending the gas tax could negatively impact the federal funding for highway projects.<\/p>\n

But after Trump endorsed the idea Monday, several House and Senate Republicans voiced support, with some introducing legislation to suspend the gas tax.<\/p>\n

Thune said Monday that “we’ll see where our members are, and if the president wants to make an argument in support of that, I’m sure everybody will give him a chance and hear him out.\u201d<\/p>\n

A gas tax holiday also has some Democratic support, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a> argued Monday that Americans need even more relief \u2014 without explicitly opposing the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenate Democrats will support real action to lower costs. But let\u2019s not pretend 18 cents of gas tax relief per gallon makes up for the damage Trump created,\u201d Schumer said. \u201cEighteen cents isn\u2019t $1.50, which is how much the price of gas has gone up since the war started.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered a lukewarm response Monday to President Donald Trump\u2019s suggestion that the federal gas tax should be suspended \u2014 even as several GOP lawmakers embraced the idea amid a global oil supply crunch. \u201cI’ve not in the past obviously been a fan of that idea,\u201d Thune told reporters. \u201cBut, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}