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Page F5From§Eachthe midnight edition — 29 September 2026

Two Republicans, one gas-price panic: Kemp cuts taxes, Grassley pushes a ban warned to raise them.

By SalStaff Writer

“Georgia Gov. Kemp suspends state gas tax for 30 days”, 29 September 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)

As it ran on the front

The senator, the oldest currently serving, has said he would rather stay in the chamber than let a Democratic governor choose the person who replaces him. Two days later, The Hill reported his own conference splitting over the idea. By the 23rd, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was pouring cold water on it in public, and economists were warning it would push the price at the pump higher, not lower — the opposite of what Grassley says it will do.

Nine hundred miles south, a different Republican was hearing a different kind of pressure. On September 21st, Georgia's Democratic nominee for governor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, called on Governor Brian Kemp to revive the fuel tax suspension he had let quietly expire earlier in the year, this time for diesel alone, as prices kept climbing with no sign of stopping. On Monday, Kemp answered with more than diesel: an executive order suspending the entire state motor fuel tax, 33.3 cents a gallon on gasoline and 37.3 cents a gallon on diesel, for 30 days starting at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.…

…(cont) Line the two men up and the shape is plain. Kemp is cutting a tax to bring a price down before an election his own party could lose to the person who pressured him into it. Different states, different tools, same emergency, same election-year math: whatever keeps the seat.

Nobody in either story is proposing to send a check to the trucker paying more at the diesel pump or the farmer paying more to run the combine. Georgia's cut runs out in 30 days. Grassley's ban, if it ships, raises the price the trucker pays and the price the farmer pays before it lowers anything for anybody. The tax cut and the export ban are not opposites so much as two versions of the same bet: that voters notice the gesture before they notice the bill.

“Two Republicans, one panic, opposite plays, and both plays end at the same address: the seat. Kemp hands back a tax for 30 days because Bottoms made him look bad on diesel prices with an election on the line; Grassley wants to choke off diesel exports even though his own party's energy chief just told him it'll raise the price, because he'd rather keep the seat than let a Democratic governor anywhere near it. Nobody's cutting a check to the guy hauling freight or running the combine — that part never changes.”
Sal
“Look, Governor Kemp is just responding to voters, that's called leadership, and Senator Grassley is protecting American energy security — sovereignty, whatever the word is — by keeping diesel here where it belongs. Sure, his own energy secretary says the ban would raise prices, but that's, well, that's a — did I say raise? I meant lower. Look, the point is these are two totally separate situations that have nothing to do with elections.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

Georgia Gov. Kemp suspends state gas tax for 30 days
The Hillmainstream§

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Monday signed an executive order suspending the state's gas tax for 30 days as the Iran war sends gas prices soaring. The order, which starts at 12:01 a.m.

· Keisha Lance Bottoms presses Kemp to pause diesel tax as rising prices show no sign of slowing from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.