This morning’s Environment & Energy Daily has a nice piece on the current gridlock over transportation reauthorization (http://eenews.net/EEDaily/2009/11/19/1/).  Despite a major bridge collapse in Minnesota more than two years ago, and widespread constituent dissatisfaction with crumbling infrastructure and crippling congestion, Congress has been unable to reauthorize the key law governing our federal surface transportation programs, which expired this past September 30.

E&E correctly points out that the “driving force behind the need to postpone the next highway bill is that lawmakers have yet to find a way to pay for what is expected to be a substantial increase in federal infrastructure investment.”

E&E helpfully points out that ”there is near universal consensus among transportation experts that increasing the gas tax is necessary in the short-term to pay for both road maintenance and new construction projects.”  That’s true, but the real issue is that with increasing market share from biofuels (exempt from the tax), hybridization, and the looming promise of full-on electrification, the idea of funding our infrastructure with a tax on gasoline is growing increasingly outdated.

The real issue is that transportation infrastructure needs to be paid for more directly by the users of that infrastructure.  The gas tax was an imperfect proxy for such a user-fee, and as technology and public policy advance, the gas tax is better suited for either discouraging fuel use and our consequent dependence on foreign oil (as in most of the rest of the developed world) or as a revenue stream for R&D into domestic, sustainable alternatives, or both.

Nonetheless, in the short-term there are few alternatives to the gas tax — other than the old favorite of borrowing from our children and grandchildren via deficit spending.  So a near-term, perhaps indexed increase  in the tax as a transition to other user pay mechanisms that more equitably distribute costs among all users is worth exploring.

 Here’s where a few profiles in courage are needed, but sorely lacking.  Back to E&E:

“But very few lawmakers have been willing to even float the idea for fear of the political consequences.”

Leave it to long-time budget hawk Senator George Voinovich to be ” one of the few lawmakers to vocally call for the tax hike, arguing the public is more willing to face the reality than the politicians.”

“Most people in the House and the Senate are all worried about a vote on an increase in the gas tax,” Voinovich said. “They are, and you can’t do it without that, there just aren’t any other [short-term funding] alternatives.”

Senator Voinovich will be sorely missed when he leaves office after the 2010 elections.  Let’s give him the nearly last word, describing his conversations with Republican leadership on the issue:  “I’ve said to them that it is time that we did something on behalf of our country and stop playing politics and stop worrying if we are going to elect more Republicans the next time around, and if we can take a shot at the other side by saying they are voting for tax increases.” 

More adult leadership like that on this and many other issues would be welcome.

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