Posted on 07/11/2014 2:51:20 PM PDT by robowombat
Center for American Progress wants mileage-based highway fee
By Keith Laing - 07/11/14 12:08 PM EDT
The Center for American Progress is calling for Congress to ditch the federal gas tax in lieu of a system where drivers pay fees for road construction based on how many miles they travel.
The proposed mileage-based system has been controversial in previous transportation funding debates because critics question how government would monitor the traveling habits of drivers without infringing upon their privacy.
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But the Center for American Progress said Friday that taxing drivers based on how far they drive is a much more sustainable system than the current 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax. With people driving more fuel-efficient cars, the gas tax isn't bringing in enough money and Congress is scrambling to reach a deal to prevent a cut-off in federal road repair funds.
The mileage-based taxation system was one of four recommendations made Friday by the Center for American Progress, which was founded by White House adviser John Podesta.
The group’s other ideas included a 15-cent gas tax hike to “stabilize” federal highway funding, which would be used to transition government away from the gas tax, and a $100 million mileage-based fee pilot program in 10-15 states.
The recommendations come as Congress is moving toward approving a temporary stopgap that would infuse about $10 billion into the Department of Transportation’s beleaguered Highway Trust Fund.
The gas tax has been the traditional source for funding for the trust fund since it was created in the 1950s. It hasn't been hiked since 1993.
Budget analysts have predicted a $16 billion shortfall next year between gas tax revenue and what Congress wants to spend on roads. The gas tax typically brings in about $34 billion per year, compared with $50 billion in annual road and transit spending.
The Transportation department has warned that it would have to cut its funding to states by 28 percent if Congress does not act quickly to replenish the Highway Trust Fund.
Center for American Progress Director of Infrastructure Policy Kevin DeGood said it was time for Congress to look for other funding sources besides the gas tax if it hopes to craft a meaningful long-term transportation funding bill.
“For too long, Congress avoided addressing our transportation funding problem,” he said. “Americans need a long-term solution. Mileage fees offer an equitable and effective way to provide for our transportation needs.”
Why should we care what this Hillary-backing organization wants?
yea, so we get to subsidize even more dollars because of trains, planes, and buses. Lots of people take planes for vacations where a lot of people do not have the money to do so.
There is enough money for roads. The problem is that the politicians haven’t spent the money on roads.
And that is how government continues to grow. We need the bureau of relative mileage to tax according to the number miles driven
Leftist trojan but actually how roads should have been funded all along; fuel taxes don’t accurately reflect usage or road wear.
Not exactly. As a vehicle becomes more fuel-efficient, it produces less tax revenue while not reducing wear on the roads nearly as much, and not reducing space taken up at all. If someone drives an electric car, they're freeloading completely on the system.
The idea of a user fee is actually a profoundly conservative idea. Don't want to pay for the roads? Then don't drive.
I don't know enough about this proposal to support it, but the basic idea of roads paid for by user fees is a good one.
I will be irritated if someone wants to tax me for using my gas grill, when natural gas is a cleaner combustible fuel than gasoline or charcoal, all because my use of natural gas on the grill emits CO2
They also don’t likely raise the kinds of funds needed for road maintenance, either?
I am “calling for” the Center for American Progress to be exiled from America for their self-righteous stupidity.
Need to find a way to tax leftism. Budget deficits would disappear for a long time.
They could just raise the gas tax, but they don’t want to call it that anymore. People get mad when they can see the price.
” a direct attack on those who live in rural areas and the exurbs as they must drive on the highways and for longer distances than city people “
Well,,,,, you’re supposed to move into the city!
Gas prices effect pretty much all other goods you can buy via transportation and fuel costs. Even with the new fuel cell trucks, it does cost to get the electricity to obtain the hydrogen and oxygen to fill the fuel cell.
I smell a huge project to build thousands of federal motor vehicle inspection stations, staffed by unionized employees making fedgov wages and benefits.
Typical liberal BS. First, they want us to drive fuel efficient cars “for the environment” and then they scratch their heads we people do and buy less gallons of fuel that is taxed.
So to maintain their greedy worthless asses in taxpayer funded salaries until they die they come up with another idea. They are never happy and then accuse conservatives of the same (Obama’s border speech when he said “we built their fence, do they want a moat? Alligators in the moat?” which are all lies).
Reminds me when we used paper sacks for groceries and the liberal whiners wanted us to shift to plastic to “save the trees” and now whine about plastics and demand we use cloth bags. Then they’ll find something wrong with those (bacteria for sure) and ‘demand’ we use something else. I’d bet good money it will be back to paper. Post consumer of course!
I truly hate liberals and wish they all just died.
Of course they don’t since the money is all in general revenue. They collect more than enough in gas taxes to take care of the roads (state and federal) but notice how the liberals are always lying and whining that the “highway funds” are depleted?
Wake Up America!! Stop believing their lies.
Tampering with speedometers is illegal in most states.
In TN we have to get a yearly emissions inspection to renew the vehicle tags. They get the mileage then. Easy to calculate the miles driven from one year to the next.
Most states already do this. I’m not advocating this type of tax just pointing out it wouldn’t take a huge new agency to do it.
Change the CAP description to Marxist leftist two man think tank. Actually the Soros funded CAP has scores, if not hundreds of serious marxists/socialists on their staff/as Fellows, including (past and present, Morton Halperin, Robert Borosage (IPS), and Van Jones.
They are as dangerous a marxist think tank cancer as is the older Institute for Policy Studies from which Borosage and many other CAPers came from.
Although, it makes more sense to have a tax based on both vehicle weight and miles driven to use for maintenance of roads, does anybody believe for a second that a) it will replace or even reduce the gas tax, or b) any new funds generated from such a tax would actually be used to mantain roads. Yeah, and lottery money funds k-12 education
The solution is so obvious, just tax the rich.
The statists keep pushing this idea. It has nothing to do with revenue or maintaining roads. Libs could care less about roads.
This is a way for them to force full time GPS monitoring on every vehicle. They want to be able to charge you based on where and when you drive. They also want to track your every move and know who you associate with. They want to be able to give you automatic tickets for speeding or parking too long.
There is nothing “conservative” about it. It is Big Brother’s dream to force this on us.
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