"I Don't Know What the Hell It Is" Was the Announcement. The Order Says Treasury Must First Find That a Disaster or a Military Action Occurred.

Grand Island, Nebraska, a rally for Pete Ricketts, diesel at $6.29. He tells the crowd he does not know what red-dyed diesel is and then announces he is waiving the rule that keeps it off the highway. The press ran the line as color and the order as a price story, and the price critique is right — moving existing gallons around more cheaply refines no new ones, and the shortage is the war. But read Section 2(a). The order does not defer the tax. It instructs Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of War, to decide within five days whether a qualifying event has occurred under 26 U.S.C. 7508A — a statute captioned for federally declared disasters, significant fires, and terroristic or military actions. There is no fire and no declared disaster in the document. Which box gets checked is an inference and it is flagged as one here, but the consultation partner is the Secretary of War and the reason diesel costs $6.29 is a war the same man called "essentially almost over" that same evening. Section 3 requires the guidance to state the legal basis. Nobody has asked what it will say. Three more things nobody printed: defer is not forgive, and Section 3 requires a date "by which postponed taxes must be paid," so an October fill-up may be a January bill. The red dye is an enforcement marker, and Section 2(c) tells the IRS not to apply the penalty the marker exists to trigger. And the 24.4 cents is the Highway Trust Fund — truckers are its main payers, the deferral runs eight weeks past the election with instructions to explore erasing it, and Tennessee was already $400 million short on highway maintenance before it joined in.