Filed under: Legislation and Policy, USA

It takes one of two things for a politician to support a hike in the gas tax: courage or no interest in a political future. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) has at least one of these aspects and made his case for a bigger gas tax in a letter to members of President Obama's debt commission:
A multiyear transportation bill that is paid for would be a real economic stimulus and create immediate jobs. The Transportation Department estimates that for every $1 billion the federal government invests in highways and bridges, 34,800 jobs are created or maintained. Highway projects worth more than $47 billion are ready to go, according to state departments of transportation. ...

We do not need to borrow money for the transportation bill. We can pay for it by increasing the gas tax. ... The gas tax is a user fee, and just a few cents could help create jobs, improve our infrastructure and better the climate. ...

Reagan knew America was in dire straits and fought hard for a gas tax increase once he realized the effect it would have on the economy. It was a tough pill for his conservative colleagues to swallow. But, in the end, Congress passed the much-needed Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, which provided a 5-cent gas tax increase and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. History speaks for itself.

Today, groups that don't traditionally back tax increases - among them, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Trucking Association - have come out in support of a gas tax increase because of this reauthorization bill's ability to put Americans back to work.Whether Voinovich is courageous is up to you to decide, but it is a fact that he's retiring, so take that for what it's worth. To be fair, he's been pushing for a higher gas tax since at least April. Also, for the record, the federal gas tax is just 18.4 cents a gallon.

We've taken out part of Voinovich's letter where he names the year when the federal gas tax was last increased because, like we did before, we want to see if our readers know when the tax was last raised. You can take our poll and then read Voinovich's entire letter after the jump.

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[Source: The Hill]

Continue reading Sen. Voinovich (R-OH) calls for a raise to the gas tax

Sen. Voinovich (R-OH) calls for a raise to the gas tax originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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