Gas Tax

Congressional committees charged with drafting the new transportation bill have been holding hearings to seek input from stakeholders around the country. In today’s installment, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee heard from five state DOT chiefs, one city official, and the chair of FedEx. Those witnesses’ pleas to the committee ranged from bike trails and transit to highways and deregulation.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee just spent two days listening to 40 experts from different aspects of the transportation sector and advocacy community, from engineers to environmentalists to the Tea Party. Each person had just four minutes to speak and they crammed as much as they could into their time: observations, demands, recommendations for a better transportation bill. Their ideas were widely divergent on many points, but on one, they found unity: This should not be a smaller bill than the one that came before it.

With the White House unwilling to engage on the specifics of how to pay for its $556 billion transportation bill, members of Congress are studying the possibilities. Earlier this month, Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) asked the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the potential of a vehicle-miles-traveled fee as a fairer way to tax drivers.

Senator Barbara Boxer got down to brass tacks on transportation funding in a committee hearing yesterday, even as DOT Secretary Ray LaHood remained vague on how to pay for the president's ambitious proposal. Boxer said she’s not in favor of raising the gas tax, but she’d like it to be indexed to inflation. “We don’t even know if the president would go that far with us,” she said, but clearly something needs to be done.

Before crafting their $556 billion transportation proposal, Obama administration officials toured the country, holding a series of listening sessions to hear what people wanted in a long-term transportation bill. Now, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is doing the same thing -- but don’t expect committee Republicans to come to the same conclusions as the administration.

Business and labor came together to make a rare show of unity today to push for a robust transportation reauthorization with adequate investment for infrastructure. And they spoke out loud and clear for a higher gas tax. Most surprising of all – it seemed that Senators were finally ready to have a mature discussion about it.

Rep. Richard Hanna, recently named the vice chair of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, is one of 19 freshmen Republicans on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. (Duncan Hunter is the 20th new Republican on the committee, but he’s not a freshman.) He represents New York’s 24th District, which includes Cooperstown, Utica, Norwich and the Finger Lakes. He’s a licensed pilot, an NRA member, and the founder of a crisis fund for women. We caught up with him to talk transportation and asked him some questions from our readers.

You’ve heard it a thousand times from the highway lobby: Roads pay for themselves through "user fees" -- a.k.a. gas taxes and tolls -- whereas transit is a drain on the taxpayer. They use this argument to push for new roads, instead of transit, as fiscally prudent investments.