An 18.4-cent holiday would shave the sign by less than a quarter and land squarely on Election Day season.

WASHINGTON – He’s thinking about suspending the federal gas tax. Four weeks before the midterms. And the timing is a coincidence. Sure. And I’m at the all-you-can-eat buffet for the salad.

How Much a Federal Gas Tax Holiday Would Actually Save You

Eighteen cents. That’s the federal piece. You suspend it and the sign changes by less than a quarter. The war doesn’t end. The platform doesn’t reopen. Iran doesn’t suddenly remember who runs it. You get a digit that’s a little less rude, for a period that happens to overlap with people voting. Aides say relief is relief. It is. A coupon is also relief. You still know who printed the coupon, and you know the expiration is doing more work than the discount.

For the record, it’s a bit more than eighteen. The Energy Information Administration lists the federal tax on gasoline at 18.4 cents per gallon, which is an 18.3-cent excise tax plus a tenth of a cent for a leaking-tank cleanup fee. So the headline number is 18.4. The savings, if the whole amount reached the customer, which it often doesn’t, would be enough for a gumball and some change on a typical fill-up.

The Highway Trust Fund Problem Nobody Wants at the Podium

What’s the deal with a tax holiday. We do this every time the number gets embarrassing. Somebody discovers the 18 cents, like it was behind the couch. The highway people mention that the 18 cents is how we keep the road from becoming a suggestion. They say it quietly, in a memo, because they have said it before and watched the memo go live with its cousins on a farm. The bridges don’t get a vote. The bridges are the thing the holiday borrows from.

The Federal Highway Administration’s explainer, Funding Federal-Aid Highways, lays out how fuel taxes flow into the Highway Trust Fund and why the balance matters. It’s a dry read and it was written years ago, but the plumbing hasn’t changed. And Bloomberg Government has reported that a suspension would cost the federal government billions of dollars every month. Somebody has to cover that, and it won’t be the person who announced it.

Not a New Idea: The Gas Tax Holiday Has Been Floating Since Spring

The notion isn’t fresh. ABC affiliates carried a report on Trump pushing a gas tax holiday amid the fuel crunch and the political blowback earlier this year, so the coincidence has been warming up in the bullpen for months. A coincidence that shows up in May and is still pitching in October starts to look like a plan with a long runway.

Even the savings that do show up are slippery. A tax holiday is only a price cut if the station passes it through, and a station is a small business with a small margin and a sign out front that it can change at will. Some owners will drop the price by the full amount. Some will drop it by most of the amount and pocket the rest, and good luck proving it from your car. The customer sees a number on a pole. The customer does not see the argument behind the number.

Congress, the Midterms and the Politics of “Consideration”

Republicans in tight districts will take the coupon and the argument. Democrats who hated the gimmick last time are already splitting into “this is late” and “I’ll vote for it in my district.” Nobody’s holding the vote yet. Consideration photographs the same as passage and costs less. The president likes consideration. Consideration doesn’t have to clear a committee.

Ask a truck driver how this goes and you’ll get a short, colorful answer. Diesel isn’t taxed the same way, so a gasoline-only holiday does nothing for the guy hauling groceries across three states, and it’s his costs that end up on the shelf tag. Relief that skips the people who move the stuff you buy is relief with a very specific audience.

Mortgages, Diesel and the Rest of the Receipt

The rest of the table is still the rest of the table. Mortgages over 7. A jobs print that barely hired anybody. Diesel out in the farm belt, where the tractors don’t take a speech as fuel. You can knock 18 cents off and the receipt still looks like the receipt. Voters don’t grade the explanation. They grade the number they can read without finding their glasses in the cupholder.

Will the Gulf Storm Change the Timing?

A Gulf storm may make the whole idea look small by Friday. He doesn’t like his ideas to look small. He may wait to see which headline is winning. The coincidence can spare a few days. Historic coincidences are flexible. That’s how they get to be historic. Regular coincidences have to happen when they happen. Historic ones check the calendar, see an election, and say what a stroke of luck.