House Republican Press Release

June 2, 2007

Press Office: 860-240-8700

CANDELORA: DEMOCRATS KILL REPUBLICAN GAS TAX CUT

HARTFORD – House Democrats tonight finally killed the Gas Tax Holiday Republicans crafted to immediately save motorists 25 cents per gallon from Memorial Day to Labor Day, despite widespread public outrage at the record high fuel prices.

The Republican amendment, supported by Representative Vincent Candelora (R-86) would have saved motorists more than $125 million in fuel costs from now until Labor Day and the lost revenue would have been replaced with a portion of the $846 million surplus.

“Unfortunately, in a transparently partisan act, legislative Democrats only wanted to pay lip service to supporting a Gas Tax Holiday to pass real savings on to Connecticut motorists during this time of outrageously high prices,” said Candelora.  “They vote for it once on their tax package which they knew would be vetoed by the Governor.  This was the only real chance they had to cut gas prices at the pump, and they punted.”

Every Republican in the House and Senate voted to cut the gas tax since the House Republicans first proposed it on May 14. Since then, Democrats used procedural slight of hands to try and fool the public into thinking that they supported the gas tax cut.

Candelora noted that 173 of the 187 lawmakers in the House and Senate have in recent weeks voted to cut the state gas tax, either in amendments or on the Democratic tax legislation that was supported by 90 of the 107 House Democrats. Those votes were for bills that were crafted to give Democrats political cover but stood no chance of ever becoming law.

“The Democrats are apparently happy to be able to go back to their districts being able to say they voted for this measure once,” said Candelora.  “But the fact is, they had the power to deliver it, and they failed, because they never actually intended to give this relief.”

This session of the Connecticut General Assembly adjourns at midnight June 6^th, 2007.