Our Say: A gas tax increase? A recession isn't the right time

No good deed goes unpunished.

Although average gasoline prices have plunged from more than $4.10 a gallon at their peak last year to about $1.65, American drivers - worried about far more than prices at the pump - have been staying off the roads in unprecedented numbers.

Interest in mass transit has gone up (at exactly the moment that cash-strapped governments are cutting bus service). Sales of fuel-efficient cars - to the extent that anyone can afford big-ticket items - are up, while sales of sport utility vehicles are down.

America's newly cautious drivers, among the world's biggest consumers of gasoline, surely deserve much of the credit for a worldwide plunge in oil prices that has the delightful side effect of hurting such fine, upstanding regimes as those of Russia, Venezuela and Iran.

So, along comes the National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing to propose a reward for all these well-behaved U.S. consumers: a 10-cents-a-gallon hike in the federal gas tax. As the tax is now 18.4 cents a gallon, that would be an increase of more than 50 percent. The panel also recommends a 12- to 15-cent hike in the tax on diesel fuel.

In a report issued a year ago, another blue-ribbon panel, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission, called for a gas-tax increase of as much as 40 cents a gallon, phased in over five years.

To be fair, these commissions are not composed of sadists trying to come up with ways to give American drivers a gratuitous slap in the face. They are worried about the shortfall in the programs that raise money for highway repair and construction - a shortfall that gets worse when Americans spend less on gasoline.

The U.S. tax is far lower than those imposed in Europe, and with gas prices down, Americans presumably will be more tolerant of an increase.

It's not going to happen. Gas tax hikes are never politically popular. And Congress is not crazy enough to impose one in the middle of a deep recession, when anything likely to discourage economic activity must be avoided like the plague.

If the gas tax does eventually have to go up - a big if, as far as we're concerned - we like the idea that columnist Charles Krauthammer argued for in the Jan. 5 issue of the Weekly Standard: A "net-zero" gas tax that would be compensated for with an equivalent cut in the federal payroll tax. This would ensure the economic and environmental benefits of reduced use of gasoline while providing a quick economic stimulus (as people would be unlikely to plough all the extra money from the payroll tax cut back into gas purchases).

The country will eventually have to find ways to put more money into highway infrastructure. But for now, the American taxpayer has all the pain he can handle - and his forbearance in using his car shouldn't be rewarded with a gas tax increase.