A fuel gauge showing the gas tax falling to zero.
Wisconsin Democrats have the right idea. They just have the wrong plans.
Last week Legislative Democrats announced a series of more than a dozen initiatives designed to lower the cost of living for average Wisconsin families. Their ideas covered things as diverse as school lunches, the homestead tax credit, and a bunch of ideas aimed at controlling health care costs, especially the costs of prescription drugs.
The broad theme is great: aim at the middle and address the biggest concern for most voters, which is the cost of living. But a dozen ideas is too many and a lot of them get into the weeds of Swamp Wonky. For example, they would require anyone who markets or promotes pharmaceuticals to health care professionals be licensed by the insurance commissioner. Well, gosh, that’s just a bolt of policy lightning, isn’t it?
Moreover, none of these proposals has much of a chance in the Legislature, which is still controlled by Republicans in both houses, albeit by smaller margins. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos isn’t going to hand Democrats any victories they can run on in 2026, when they have some realistic chance of taking back a majority in one or both houses.
What Democrats need is strong simplicity, not a plethora of policy papers. Here’s my suggestion: they should propose a significant reduction in the state’s gas tax. The exact amount isn’t important as long as it is big enough. It doesn’t have a chance of passage anyway. When you’re in the minority the idea is not to govern, it’s to make a point about how you would govern if you got the majority back.
And the gas tax is dynamite. Virtually every voter drives and everybody is hyper-aware of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. What other product’s price is displayed on big, back lit boards all over the place? You want to impact the cost of living for average families — and, what’s most important, make sure they know you did it? Lower the gas tax.
There will be an odd coalition in opposition to this. Environmentalists will argue that it will encourage more driving and use of fossil fuels while their natural opponents, the road building lobby, will say that this will reduce revenues that pay for fixing streets and highways.
They’re both only a little bit right. Look, people like to drive and it’s the easiest way to get around in a largely rural state. Environmentalists are wrong when they think everybody is just itching to get on a bus and would if only they ran more frequently and to more places. Maybe some Madisonians and Milwaukeeans are like that, but they vote for Democrats anyway. Average voters like their cars and trucks. So, lowering the cost of gas by a few cents just isn’t going to make much difference.
The same goes for building roads. There’s still a lot of money floating around from Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure act — for which, by the way, he and the Democrats got no credit. Moreover, the old rule that we would pay for roads out of the gas tax was broken several years ago at both the state and federal levels. Now we pay for roads out of the general fund in addition to transportation-related taxes and fees, so the relationship between the size of the gas tax and road building has been weakened.
Still, this would be a difficult position to take because the environmental lobby is an important Democratic constituency and the road builders spread a lot of money around to candidates in both parties.
But the point isn’t to placate narrow interest groups. The point is to take back the majority in at least one house in two years. To do that Democrats need to reconnect to the middle class, especially in districts outside of cities, where driving is the only way to get around. Enviros might not like it, but they’ll vote for Democrats anyway. Road builders won’t like it, but they’ll cover their bases with campaign cash in any event.
What’s important is that hundreds of thousands of average voters will love it. And it will change their image of the Democratic Party in a positive way. Do you just want to win? Nothing would work better than proposing a gas tax cut.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
