When the House Ways and Means Committee meets Wednesday to take its first tentative steps to deciding how to pay for a federal infrastructure bill, its members will revive a perennial battle that could derail the whole debate: whether to raise a gas tax unchanged since 1993.
Between this year and fiscal 2030, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cumulative shortfall for the highway account is expected to reach $134 billion, with a shortfall of an additional $54 billion for mass transit.
Among the options put forth Monday in a paper from the Joint Committee on Taxation are a mileage-based tax system, an infrastructure bank, tolling and public-private partnerships.
Perhaps the easiest option is to stick with the tried and true: raising the gas tax.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman
Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., has suggested Congress raise the gas tax in part by indexing it to inflation. And groups as diverse as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO, the American Public Transportation Association and the American Trucking Associations have also backed an increase in the gas tax, which is fixed at 18.3 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.3 cents per gallon for diesel and kerosene.
But Republicans remain resistant.
The ranking Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep.
Sam Graves, R-Mo., has instead endorsed a mechanism that would allow highway users to pay based on vehicle miles traveled.
On Monday, he highlighted a report by the state of Washington recommending it move away from fuel taxes to a vehicle miles traveled system to pay for the state’s highways, saying “the report clearly shows that transitioning to a VMT system is a more equitable way to charge drivers for the roads they use, and that we are in fact capable of beginning that transition now.”
DeFazio — who is expected to announce general principles of his infrastructure bill on Wednesday as well — has been generally supportive of moving toward a VMT method, but argues that it’s too soon for such a dramatic shift in financing mechanisms.
How to pay for infrastructure? Ways and Means will count the ways
