Melissa Lafsky

Gas tax must be raised

Editor in Chief, The Infrastructurist, Jan 22, 10.

Tagged with transportation, infrastructure, gas tax

The federal gas tax. It needs to be raised. We’ve hammered this point home enough. Our infrastructure needs help, and that help involves money, and that money has to come from somewhere. Politicians know this. But they won’t touch the gas tax with a ten-foot pole. Why not? Because come election time, no one wants to be the candidate responsible for raising the most soundbite-ready and execrated tax on earth. Just think of all the campaign slogans you could come up with — and if you can’t think of any, there are about 200 strategists in Washington who can.

But what we may not realize is that much of the problem lies in public perception of the tax — specifically, what Americans know (or don’t) about how often it gets raised. Here’s a startling fact we came across in a poll done last year by Building America’s Future, Public Opinion Strategies, and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research: There is widespread agreement, among people of all demographics and political parties, that the federal gas tax goes up every year (unrelated to state gas taxes, which vary). Even people who closely follow infrastructure/transportation news believe this.

The survey was done from June 30 through July 2, 2009, and involved 800 adults, with a +3.46% margin of error. And a whopping 60% of the respondents — Republican and Democrat alike — believe the federal gas tax is raised annually. Geographic location didn’t make much of a difference — 61% believed this incorrect statement in the Northeast, 58% in the South, 54% in the Midwest, and 67% in the West.

The truth, of course, is that the federal gas tax has been unchanged at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. And, in a colossal error of judgment, the government neglected to index it for inflation. So it’s worth even less now than it was then.

Full story: How Often is the Gas Tax Raised? Most Americans Have No Clue.
Source: The Infrastructurist, January 21, 2010

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