As gas prices climb past $4 a gallon, lawmakers in Washington are rushing to offer drivers relief. Democratic senators have introduced the Gas Prices Relief Act of 2026, which would suspend the federal gas tax—18.4 cents per gallon—through October 1. States from Georgia to Indiana have already tapped the brakes on their own gas taxes. Prices are high, voters are angry, and cutting a tax is an easy headline.

But before celebrating the savings, it’s worth asking: would drivers actually feel the difference? The price of gasoline is set not in Washington but in the global oil market, where supply and demand shocks—like the war with Iran that have pushed West Texas Intermediate crude past $110 per barrel in April—are the dominant drivers. The federal gas tax makes up only a slice of the pump price; crude oil alone accounts for roughly 51 percent of what consumers pay per gallon. Suspending the 18.4-cent federal tax on a $4.12 gallon would amount to less than a 5 percent reduction—and that’s only if oil companies and retailers pass the full savings through to consumers, which they often don’t.

Meanwhile, the Highway Trust Fund is running on empty. Under current policies, the Trust Fund is projected to effectively go broke around 2028. The current authorization expires September 30, 2026. There’s a real possibility Congress won’t finish a full reauthorization in time and will fall back on a short-term extension. Delay has become the system’s default response to a problem it hasn’t solved in decades.

The Trust Fund was designed around a simple idea—that the people who use the roads pay for them. Fuel taxes, last meaningfully updated in 1993, were the backbone of that system. Adjusted for inflation, they have lost about 70 percent of their purchasing power. In FY2023, the purchasing power of highway account revenue was the lowest since 1984 (think: Chevrolet Cavalier). Restoring the gas tax to its 1993 purchasing power would mean roughly doubling today’s 18.3-cent rate to around 40 cents per gallon. (Good luck with that.) Vehicle fuel efficiency continues to improve, and electric vehicles pay nothing into the system.

Congress is now debating whether to suspend the gas tax entirely. The Gas Prices Relief Act includes a general fund transfer to replace lost HTF revenue—so the fund wouldn’t feel the hit directly. But every time Congress reaches into the general treasury to paper over the HTF’s shortfalls, it further weakens the user-pay principle the fund was built on, adds to the deficit, and makes it politically harder to ever restore or raise the tax.

The Congressional Budget Office’s latest baseline shows the highway account is expected to bring in about $41.6 billion this year while spending nearly $61.8 billion—a roughly $20 billion shortfall. By 2027, the account’s balance drops to about $14.5 billion, down from more than $56 billion just two years earlier. Projections point to a shortfall approaching $202 billion by 2036, with another $93 billion gap in the mass transit account. And even these figures assume current fuel taxes continue beyond their scheduled expiration.

Lawmakers are searching for something—anything—that can be done in time for reauthorization. House Transportation Chair Sam Graves has suggested a $250 fee for EVs and $100 for hybrids. It produces revenue—about $64 billion through 2034, by some estimates. But, by itself, it doesn’t even come close to solving the problem.

More comprehensive approaches—raising the gas tax, indexing it to inflation, or charging drivers based on road use—are apparently off the table. Not because they wouldn’t work, but because they would be a heavier lift politically. And it’s not like there isn’t widespread recognition of the problem. In a March 2026 letter to congressional leaders, a coalition of transportation, manufacturing, and business groups called for replacing the current system entirely—moving to a vehicle-based user fee.

The gas tax holiday debate is a microcosm of Congress’s broader pattern. When prices spike, cut the tax. When the Highway Trust Fund runs dry, top it off with general fund dollars. These are the kinds of politically easy choices designed to look responsive in the moment but are quietly weakening the system they’re meant to sustain.

The Highway Trust Fund didn’t get here by accident. It got here through decades of delay, short-term fixes, and an unwillingness to do what is politically difficult—matching revenues to reality. A gas tax holiday fits squarely into that pattern, an easy answer now that makes the problem worse later.