With gas prices in the United States at their lowest average since May 2009, momentum may be building in the newly Republican-dominant Senate for an increase in the federal gas tax, which currently stands at 18.4 cents-per-gallon and has not been increased since 1993.
Republicans have long resisted pressure to raise the federal gas tax as a way to pay for upgrades to the nation’s rickety infrastructure, but some senior Republicans have said they want to keep their options open when deciding the best way to finance infrastructure projects.
“I just think that option is there, it’s clearly one of the options,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, new chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, told The Hill.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican, also said they were open to the possibility of raising the tax.
Though increasing the federal gas tax is an idea gaining momentum in the Senate, there remains one major roadblock: the House. Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that he has never voted for an increase in the gas tax. Although he didn’t expressly state he would not vote for a hike in the future, Boehner doubted there were enough votes in Congress to pass an increase.
Nevertheless, America’s infrastructure is undeniably weak.
In its most recent report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported that 42 percent of America’s major urban highways are congested, costing an estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually. Meanwhile, one in nine of the nation’s bridges were rated as “structurally deficient” (though that does not necessarily mean “unsafe,” notes the Congressional Research Service), and the average age of the nation’s 607,380 bridges is currently 42 years.
But critics of an increased federal gas tax say the federal government does not effectively spend the revenue already gathered from the current tax.
“Before Congress even thinks about asking Americans to pay higher prices at the pump, it should make sure that the $33 billion the federal government collects annually from drivers is spent efficiently,” Americans for Tax Reform told The Hill.
Washington diverts more than 25 percent of the revenue to subways, streetcars, buses, bicycle and nature paths, and landscaping rather than road and bridge projects, says Emily J. Goff, a transportation and infrastructure policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. Instead of better roads and less traffic congestion, the money car and truck drivers spend at the pump partially subsidize public transit.
The nation’s roads are largely maintained by the federal Highway Trust Fund, which was created in 1956. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 80 percent of the costs of typical road projects are financed by the fund; state budgets pick up the rest. But the fund is nearly always short on money and nearly always patched up by Congressional deals. The most recent one happened in summer 2014, which prevented a 28 percent cut in construction spending by the Transportation Department.
