A gas-tax holiday is easy to demand. Getting one is harder.

By Jason Hancock | Editor-in-Chief

Good morning, and welcome to The Weekender.

A group of Missouri House Republicans is pushing Gov. Mike Kehoe to call lawmakers back to Jefferson City for a special session to suspend the state's 29.5-cent motor fuel tax.

The likelihood any of them will actually be standing on the House floor this summer to cast that vote is small.

Reps. Tricia Byrnes of Wentzville, Christopher Warwick of Bolivar and Jeff Vernetti of Camdenton have each called for Kehoe to convene a special session and pause the gas tax through Dec. 31.

Byrnes said she is drafting legislation and asking colleagues to sign on. Under her proposal, general revenue would hold the Missouri Department of Transportation, cities and counties harmless during the seven-month suspension — a backfill she has estimated at roughly $713 million.

The pitch lands inside a larger national moment. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a federal Gas Tax Suspension Act this month, and President Donald Trump has endorsed pausing the 18.4-cent federal levy. Republicans pushing the Missouri version have framed it as the state-level companion piece.

“Families will be driving more this summer and we can do this,” Byrnes said. “Missouri families can’t wait.”

The first obstacle is the governor. Kehoe was asked last week about any special sessions. He made it clear he didn't plan to call any. Neither House nor Senate leadership have publicly endorsed the call.

The second is the calendar. Missouri's primary is Aug. 4, and every member of the House and half the Senate is on the ballot in November. Lawmakers in competitive primaries — and many in safe seats who would simply rather be home — tend to dread being summoned back to the Capitol during campaign season, particularly for a politically fraught vote.

Special sessions also have a way of expanding beyond their stated agenda once members are gathered in one place, a recurring frustration for governors who have tried to keep them narrow. During last year’s stadium-subsidy special session, Kehoe amended his call to include property tax relief and broader tax-policy language as lawmakers tried to assemble the votes for a package centered on keeping the Chiefs and Royals in Missouri.

And then there is the politics underneath the politics.

Suspending the gas tax would require the Republican supermajority to publicly acknowledge that there is, in fact, an affordability crisis worth a midsummer trip to Jefferson City. The causes of the current spike are not principally found in Missouri statute. Gas prices have climbed sharply across the country amid the war with Iran. Trump's tariffs have also become part of the broader debate over household costs, giving Democrats an easy way to turn a state tax-cut debate into a conversation about national Republican economic policy.

That is not terrain most Missouri Republicans are eager to defend.

The proposal also collides with the governor's own tax agenda. Kehoe's signature legislative win this year was a proposed constitutional amendment, headed to the ballot, that would replace the state income tax with an expanded the sales tax. Diverting hundreds of millions in general revenue to backfill a temporary gas-tax holiday — even one Republicans could plausibly campaign on — is not an obvious fit with a pitch built around fiscal discipline.

Missouri already allows drivers to seek a refund of the 12.5-cent-per-gallon increase approved in 2021, though the process requires saving receipts and filing paperwork after the fiscal year ends.

None of this means lawmakers calling for a gas-tax holiday are wrong to see pain at the pump. The pain is real.

The veto session arrives in September. If the appetite for a gas-tax suspension persists, that's the more likely venue. For now, the press releases are doing most of the work.

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