Tax Increase Plea Gets Cool Reception

By Herman Wang, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

Jan. 18–WASHINGTON — Calls by a commission that included the head of a Chattanooga trucking company for an increase in the federal gas tax to fund infrastructure repairs drew mixed reactions from the House Transportation Committee on Thursday.

In testimony before the panel, Patrick Quinn, co-chairman and president of U.S. Xpress, said increasing the gas tax to 40 cents per gallon — until a user-based fee system or public/private partnerships can be implemented — is necessary to raise the revenue required for highway and bridge improvements.

“As a user … that pays the majority of fuel taxes by industry, it’s sometimes difficult to recommend that they be increased; but I think there is no alternative today,” he said. “That’s the fairest mechanism. It’s what we have to use because the needs are just overwhelming.”

Congestion on highways wastes between $78 billion to $200 billion annually, caused mostly by big-city bottlenecks, he said.

“We will become a third-world economy from a transportation standpoint because the infrastructure simply isn’t there to move goods,” Mr. Quinn said.

But many Republicans on the committee said they opposed raising the gas tax from 18.4 cents per gallon.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, on which Mr. Quinn serves, had recommended that increase over five years in a report released Tuesday, saying the gas tax, which funds most infrastructure improvements, has not been raised since 1993, nor kept pace with inflation.

Rep. Joe Mica, R-Fla., the ranking member on the Transportation Committee, said a gas tax hike has “a snowball’s chance” of passing.

He called for “creative financing and public-private partnerships” to increase revenues available to build and maintain infrastructure.

“It makes no sense to dramatically raise an increasingly outdated gas tax without first establishing the nation’s transportation priorities for the coming decades and a more dependable means of financing those needs,” he said.

Other committee members, mostly Democrats, attacked user-based fee systems, such as tollways, or privatization of highways, as favored by many Republicans, including a few members of the commission that disagreed with the report.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said such measures would “price working Americans” out of using the nation’s roads.

“The Lexuses will just lead their way to work,” he said.

Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., who is not a Transportation Committee member but sits on the Appropriations Committee, said he disagrees with any increase in the federal gas tax. U.S. Xpress and Covenant Transport, another top U.S. trucking company, are headquartered in his Chattanooga-area district.

“There’s no question we have an infrastructure problem,” he said. “This is the worst time to be talking about new taxes, when we’re slipping and sliding toward a recession. If somehow the economy were to stabilize, then this consideration might come back up.”

E-mail Herman Wang at hwang@timesfreepress.com

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