President Joe Biden has proposed a national “gas tax holiday” and four of the six Democrats in Colorado’s congressional delegation support the idea. We’re not sold.

The average cost of a gallon of regular gas in Colorado was $4.88 as of last Thursday, according to AAA. The tax is roughly 18 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24 cents per gallon of diesel, according to reporting by The Colorado Sun.

“The American people don’t want gas prices to go down by 18 cents, they want it to go down by two to three dollars,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert said in a statement.

We have to agree with Boebert on this one. Is 18 cents a gallon nothing? No, but with the way gas prices can fluctuate quickly it could be erased in short order. It also isn’t enough to make up for the large price increase we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Colorado’s average price a year ago was around $3.45, according to AAA.

People concerned about gas prices want significant relief, not a few months of slightly lower prices — if those even materialized.

A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette said she is open, but not committed, to the gas tax holiday idea. It sounds like her concerns are similar to ours.

“She strongly supports taking steps to bring down these record-high gas prices as soon as possible, she just needs to be convinced that a temporary pause of the gas tax will actually lead to lower prices at the pump and not just further pad big oil’s bottom line,” said DeGette’s spokesman, Ryan Brown.

Others in the Colorado congressional delegation who are in support of the idea, also called out oil companies for taking large profits.

“Nearly half of my constituents live paycheck to paycheck,” said U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, a Centennial Democrat. “They can’t afford to bear the cost of big oil’s stock buybacks and shareholder payouts.

“Suspending the federal gas tax is the right move to deliver relief to Americans who have been paying for this price gouging.”

We understand Crow’s concern for his constituents’ finances, but how would temporarily suspending our gas tax do anything about price gouging? If Crow or any of our other representatives want to tackle that issue, we’d love to see it.

The fact is, the U.S. does not have a price gouging law on the books, though many states have their own gouging laws.

If these gas price increases are even in part caused by price gouging, some legislation to address that practice sounds like a great way for Congress to protect its constituents. That’s how our government is supposed to work.

Cutting the gas tax is an easy way to show you’re “doing something” without doing much. It may lead to a few cents savings over the proposed three-month time period. Those savings may or may not show up at the pump. In the meantime consumers would still be paying very high prices and the U.S. would lose revenue that’s supposed to pay for road infrastructure.

If our lawmakers want to solve the structural reasons for higher prices or to tackle corporate malfeasance they can do what they were elected to do by putting pen to paper and passing some legislation. That would do more good than a short election-season tax break.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorial board