Does partisanship shape public support for suspending U.S. federal gas tax? A survey experiment

Abstract

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the national average gasoline price in the U.S. rose sharply. In response, President Biden wanted Congress to temporarily suspend the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gasoline tax. However, critics pointed out that gas tax suspension could: (1) undermine U.S. climate policy goals by encouraging the use of gasoline cars, (2) threaten U.S. national security by providing additional oil revenue to the Russian government for expanding its military capabilities, and (3) undermine the economy by defunding federal highway infrastructure. To systematically test how these critiques influenced public support for gas tax suspension, we administered an online survey experiment in May 2022 to a representative sample of U.S. respondents (N = 1,705). We found that in spite of high inflation during the months when the survey was conducted, in the aggregate, national security and the economy frames reduced public support for the gas tax suspension while the climate frame had no such effect. Yet, at the disaggregated level we find important partisan differences. When we interact treatment frames with respondents’ party identification, the national security and the economy frames reduced public support for the gas tax suspension among Republicans only, while the climate frame reduced public support among Democrats only.