CBS Moneywatch: Who Will Pay for Ever-Growing Infrastructure Needs
media mentionBut with the summer driving season about to start this weekend, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has jumped into the debate with some new data and commentary about the gas tax.
It points out that, taking inflation into account, the federal gas tax has lost close to 40 percent of its value since the last increase in 1993.
“To be clear, this does not suggest that construction costs have grown in an unprecedented or unexpected way,” Carl Davis a senior policy analyst at ITEP, wrote on the institute’s website. “The problem has been a long, slow, inevitable decline in purchasing power for which lawmakers failed to plan.”