GAS-TAX FOLLIES: IS OUR CONGRESSIONAL GOP THE 'STUPID PARTY' WHEN IT COMES TO CUTS?

Watching his 1962 Mets with growing dismay as they dropped pop flies, missed the cutoff man and failed to execute easy, routine plays, an anguished manager Casey Stengel cried out: "Doesn't anybody around here know how to play this game?"

One recalls Stengel as House and Senate Republican leaders watch the ball roll through their legs. The heaven-sent opportunity comes disguised as sky-high gasoline prices. One recalls Disraeli's observation, more than a century ago, that the Tories, or conservatives, are the "stupid party."

Some background: In March of this year, this writer introduced in the Missouri Senate a nonbinding resolution calling on our federal Congress to repeal or suspend the 4.3-cent fuel tax passed in 1993 for "deficit reduction." This latest federal imposition passed our last Democratic Congress, without even one Republican vote, House or Senate. The tie-breaking Senate vote: One Albert Gore Jr.

The reaction of my fellows facing the voters this year told the tale: First in line to rush down to the Senate secretary, to sign as co-sponsors of the resolution, were the two Democrats facing significant election challengers in tough races. Smiling, and evoking knowing chuckles in return, I informed the Senate that I was "proud to offer this opportunity to my colleagues who are running this year." What do those Democrats seem instinctively to know that most of our GOP congressional leaders seem to ignore?

The populist appeal of this one is clear to all but the most blinkered devotees of inside-the-Beltway thinking, especially for an under-appreciated Republican constituency: truckers. That 4.3 cents is their profit margin if, indeed, they have one left at all when a full tank is 600 bucks.

Following the 1994 election of a Republican Congress, we moved quickly from deficits to surpluses. "But it will cost the highway trust fund," say my reluctant Republican friends. (Our GOP senators and congressmen led a 1997 effort that applied the funds, previously dedicated to "deficit reduction," to the highway trust fund.) But with fat surpluses, why couldn't the trust fund be replenished out of the general revenue gusher?

More than a few Democrats grasp the populist appeal of suspending gas taxes during a time of federal surpluses. The governor of Indiana, for one. So does Texas GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who now backs suspending the entire 18-cent federal gas tax for the summer. The GOP governor of Illinois just suspended a nickel of his highest-in-the-nation levy.

Excuse me, but this one's a no-brainer. The GOP must understand: leave the cash in D.C. and they'll spend it. Return it to us, taxpayers, or else. "Republicans," as Bob Novak reminds us, "were put on this earth to cut taxes." They'd better see to it, forthwith, or don't be surprised when grassroots contributors and workers take a pass next time they need a donation, a phone caller or a yard-sign putter-upper.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.