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President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on Congress to create a three-month federal holiday for gas and diesel fuel taxes.
Biden also asked individual states to suspend their own levies on gas and diesel.
The move comes a week after the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached $5 for the first time ever.
Biden last week linked rising gas prices with many Americans’ more pessimistic view about where the country is headed.
“If you notice, until gas prices started going up,” Biden said during an Associated Press interview, “things were much more, they were much more optimistic.”
There is an 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal tax on gas, and a 24.4 cents-per-gallon federal tax on diesel fuel.
Biden’s fellow Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, has repeatedly questioned the wisdom of cutting federal taxes on fuel.
While it is “good PR,” Pelosi noted in April, “there’s no guarantee that the saving, the reduction in the federal tax, that would be passed on to the consumer.”Â