The federal gas tax has not been increased since 1993. It’s a fixed per-gallon tax, not a percentage of the price of gasoline like a sales tax, so as gas prices have gone up, this hasn’t led to increased gas tax revenues. On the contrary: higher gas prices and more fuel-efficient cars are leading to lower gas purchases, eroding the revenue stream even more. Our road infrastructure is crumbling and as the costs pile up, the funding dwindles. What do you do? Well, if you are Congress, you refuse to pass anything so it all falls apart March 31st.
It’s no joke: if the bill expires, gas taxes would cease to be collected, and existing projects would halt in their tracks, much like what happened with the state shutdown last year. The solution is pretty obvious: with the federal highway trust fund near insolvency, gas taxes need to go up. There is no other way to fund our infrastructure. But instead of increasing taxes, Republicans in Congress want them all to go away. They are being pressured by, who else, the tea-party extremist wing. Where they expect the money to come from to fix the roads is never explained, but presumably it would come from cutting waste, fraud, and defunding Acorn.
When we can’t even agree that it takes money to pay for our infrastructure, it makes me wonder if we are really capable of tackling the tough issues we face today.