State Sen. Lisa Boscola is floating a 60-day pause on Pennsylvania’s gasoline and diesel taxes, pitching it as fast relief for drivers as wholesale fuel costs jump and pump prices climb. Her plan would lean on borrowing to temporarily replace lost Motor License Fund revenue, and she is asking fellow senators in Harrisburg to sign on as co-sponsors. For now, the memos are making the rounds, but the proposals have not yet been introduced as formal bills.
What Boscola is proposing
In her co-sponsorship memos, Boscola calls for a 60-day halt to the state’s 57.6-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax and 74.1-cents-per-gallon diesel tax, with authority to issue bonds to cover the shortfall, according to the Pennsylvania State Senate gas memo and a parallel Pennsylvania State Senate diesel memo. In the gas memo she asks colleagues to “temporarily suspend the state gasoline tax for 60 days,” while the diesel memo makes a similar case to give businesses some breathing room.
Both documents stress that the pause would be short term and specifically note that they were still only memos, not yet filed as full-blown bills, when they began circulating.
Why she says it is needed
Fuel prices have jumped this week as global oil markets react to the widening conflict in the Middle East, pushing pump prices higher in Pennsylvania and across the country, according to reporting from PhillyVoice, which cites analysis from GasBuddy. AAA’s state tracker shows Pennsylvania’s average price near $3.66 per gallon on March 11, according to AAA, and GasBuddy analysts cited by PhillyVoice warned prices could climb further if shipping disruptions continue.
Boscola is framing the tax holiday as a quick, targeted move to give commuters and freight operators a little immediate cushion while markets sort themselves out.
Funding and trade-offs
Pennsylvania relies heavily on fuel-tax revenue to pay for roads, bridges and some public-safety costs, according to PennDOT and state advisory reports, so a pause would carve into that income stream. The memos propose using bonds to fill the temporary gap in the Motor License Fund so transportation projects and Pennsylvania State Police funding would not be cut, though taking on that debt would shift costs to future budgets and add interest payments.
Research on earlier short-term fuel-tax breaks suggests that only part of the tax cut typically shows up as lower prices at the pump. The Penn Wharton Budget Model has found that suspensions usually send only a portion of the savings back to drivers while reducing near-term transportation revenue.
How likely is it to pass
Right now, Boscola’s idea is still in the talk-it-over stage. The memos are circulating among senators, but no bills have been formally introduced, and state leaders had not publicly endorsed the plan as of a report from CBS News Pittsburgh, which noted that the proposal lands just as pump prices have spiked.
If lawmakers take it up, they will be weighing short-term relief at the pump against the cost to transportation funding, or they might decide to chase other ideas like more targeted rebates or one-time help for lower-income households.
Whether Boscola’s 60-day pause gets real traction will depend on how fast prices move next and how the politics play out in Harrisburg. In the coming days, legislators will decide whether to turn the memos into bills, try to reshape the proposal, or back some other form of gas-price relief.
