A Break on Fuel-Efficient Cars, Not Gas Tax, Is Needed

The revenue lost from the summer gas-tax holiday some are proposing would be about $10 billion — the cost of helping hard-hit American consumers cope with $4 a gallon gas prices. But is a onetime summer fix the right approach?

As the old proverb says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Translation to today: Three months of slightly cheaper gas is nice, for now. But give a million consumers a $10,000 average discount for a fuel-efficient new car, and that would last long past Labor Day as a break from high gas prices. It also would spur the American auto industry and economic activity in a down economy and start us on a serious national security approach to America being an oil hostage, a problem we are 35 years overdue in really tackling.

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This article was originally published in Detroit Free Press.