White House disowns plan to tax car mileage

The White House on Thursday walked back a proposal to tax people based on how many miles they drive.
 
The proposal was included in a draft of the administration's Transportation Opportunities Act, but a White House spokesman said it "was not an administration proposal."
 
"This is not a bill supported by the administration," White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not take into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

The legislation the White House is distancing itself from calls for creating a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office within the Federal Highway Administration. It would be tasked with creating a "study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems."

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) has indicated that he did not think a tax-per-mile proposal was politically palatable, but said Congress would have to look for ways to supplement declining gas tax revenues.
 
Increasingly energy-efficient cars are generating less money, Mica said in a 2009 interview with The West Volusia Beacon in his home state.

"Even an increase in gas taxes now will not solve the problem,” Mica said. "Every day, the fleet is getting more efficient. They’re literally driving further and paying less, so the system will collapse."

But even before Republicans took control of the House in 2010 on an anti-government wave, Mica said the tax-per-mile proposal would be a tough sell to voters.
 
“They’ll be coming with pitchforks up the Capitol steps,” Mica told the newspaper.
 
Mica's office did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday.

The post first appeared on The Hill's Transportation Report blog at 12:22 p.m. Thursday.