What does the federal gas tax go toward?
Marketplace Morning Report
Marketplace
4.5 • 927 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
To address pain at the pump, President Donald Trump and some Congressional Republicans are floating the idea of temporarily pausing the federal gas tax. The thing is, that gas tax helps pay for the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, and more. Today, we delve into how the tax shows up in our everyday lives. Then, we head to Boston to hear how a small college there is serving low-income, first-generation students.
Transcript
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| 0:04.2 | And yet, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is fighting for its life. |
| 0:08.5 | I've never been a big fan of FEMA. |
| 0:10.0 | FEMA's a disaster. |
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| 0:20.6 | American Emergency, the Movement to Kill FEMA, is a brand new series from WNYC's on the media. |
| 0:27.2 | Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:31.3 | We've had a gas tax for almost a century. What does it do? |
| 0:36.9 | From Marketplace, I'm Sabrina Banishore in New York. President Trump |
| 0:40.3 | and some congressional Republicans want to temporarily pause the federal gas tax to help with costs |
| 0:45.8 | at the pump. Democrats prefer to tax oil companies and pass that along as tax rebates. As that |
| 0:51.7 | debate goes on, we thought it would be a good time to take a closer |
| 0:54.4 | look at the gas tax and how it shows up in our everyday lives. Marketplace's Caitlin Tan has that. |
| 1:00.8 | If you've ever driven to see the sunrise in the Grand Canyon or a grizzly bear romp in Yellowstone, |
| 1:07.1 | chances are the federal gas tax helped you get there. So I think we've had a gas tax like nearly 90 years. |
| 1:14.6 | 94, to be exact. |
| 1:16.5 | That's Andy Winkler with the Bipartisan Policy Center. |
| 1:19.5 | The tax goes into... |
| 1:21.4 | All kinds of different projects around the country. |
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