Will Braun Follow Through on Suspending Gas Tax?

I want to ask a question of our governor. Some of you may have access to him. I think you know I really haven’t had much access to the governor in the past year. But for those of you who do, maybe you could ask him a question for me. I want to go back for a moment because the Indy Star had an article saying gas has officially passed the $4 threshold in central Indiana. I saw gas for $3.99 in a couple places. I saw it for $4.19 in one place. Now, I filled up thanks to advice from a friend of the show, the oil guy Bill Herrick. If you listened to Monday’s show, we told you it was going to happen. We said please go fill up. Bill said this thing is going down, and it did. This is why it literally pays to listen to this show. We have the experts and we relay the information. Gas did, as Bill said, cross the $4 threshold in central Indiana. So it begs the question for Governor Braun. When is he going to follow through on what sounded like a potential pledge to get rid of the gas tax? When is he going to follow through on that? Let me remind you what he said. Let’s go back a couple weeks. This was March 9, according to Fox 59, which had the story at the time. I went back and reviewed it in the archives. Here’s the quote from Mike Braun. He was talking about the war with Iran and skyrocketing gas prices. By the way, the price of gas at that time was $3.48 a gallon. So let’s keep the frame of reference here. Gas was $3.48 a gallon. Gas now costs $4 in central Indiana. That means gas has gone up $0.52 since that statement. Braun said, quote, "If the thing gets belabored beyond what most think will be two-and-a-half to three weeks,” Gov. Braun said of his interest in suspending Indiana’s gas tax. “Once you secure the supply coming through the Strait of Hormuz, you’re going to see (prices) go down. Ideally, as much as it went up. If not, everybody will have to use the tools in their own tool chest to make sure you mitigate it.” Now Braun is the worst person possible to send out to give a sales pitch on anything because he can’t speak clearly. He talks in circles. You ask him a question, he takes nine minutes to answer it and never actually answers the question. But it sounded like he said two and a half to three weeks was his time frame. Again, I’m trying to decipher Braun-speak here, but two and a half to three weeks was the time frame he gave. Then he was asked about suspending the gas tax. He said everyone would have to use the tools in their own tool chest to mitigate it. Okay. That was March 9. Today is March 25. That was 17 days ago. Public school math tells me there are seven days in a week. Seventeen days means we are now at two and a half weeks. We are now inside the time frame Braun laid out. There is no plan to stabilize the Strait of Hormuz. There is no plan to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Gas has skyrocketed $0.52 since his statement. By the way, the gas tax in Indiana between the state and the federal government is $0.72. Only $0.18 of that is the federal gas tax. That means roughly $0.54 of the price you pay for gas is taxes here in the state of Indiana. And don’t forget, we actually have two taxes on gas. We have the special gas tax that punishes you for driving. Then we have the sales tax on gasoline. That sales tax is the real scam. The sales tax on gas is based on the price of gas. Seven percent. Whatever the price of gas is, seven percent. So that tax is about to go up. The government literally profits off you paying more for gas. Think about how ridiculous that is. Can you think of another example where the government benefits directly when the price of something essential goes up like this? The government is going to make more money because you are paying more for gas. So all these conservative activists who are meeting with Braun at the governor’s mansion—where he tells you things, promises things, and doesn’t follow through—maybe you could ask him something on behalf of Rob Kendall. Ask him when he’s going to suspend the gas tax. Ask him when he’s going to follow through, because all the criteria he laid out according to Fox 59 have been met. Two and a half weeks have passed. The Strait of Hormuz is not secure. Gas is much more expensive than it was on March 9, and it was expensive then. But of course, as usual with Braun, he says a lot of things and doesn’t follow through. He writes checks with his mouth that his actions don’t cash. So if someone could get to the governor and say, “Hey, Rob Kendall would like to know when you’re going to follow through on suspending the gas tax,” that would be helpful. Because Rob Kendall was your buddy until you pushed through property tax policies that hurt the state. And once he figured that out, you stopped talking to him. So maybe someone could ask him when he plans to follow through.