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Road builders: Higher emission rules will drain highway money
The America Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) said Thursday that higher gas mileage requirements for cars enacted this week by the Obama administration will make less fuel tax money available to pay for construction projects.
The Washington, D.C.-based ARBTA said the administration's proposal to require cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon in 2025 will cost the highway trust fund, which traditionally pays for a large portion of road and transit projects, $71 billion. The new emission rules were finalized by the departments of transportation and environmental protection earlier this week.
The federal gas tax, which has been 18.4 cents per gallon since the early 1990s, currently generates about $35 billion per year. The recently approved $105 billion highway bill spent more than $50 billion annually, which transportation advocates argue is barely enough to maintain the existing road and transit systems.
Lawmakers already used a package of tax loopholes and fee increases to provide the cover than $10 billion shortfall in gas tax revenue in the current transportation bill, which is set to expire in 2014.
Advocates and observers say Congress will likely have to consider other revenue sources for transportation funding, with or without higher mileage standards. At least one idea that is often floated among dedicated transportation supporters, a tax on miles traveled by a vehicle (VMT), has been disavowed by both the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress.
The GOP included an anti-VMT plank in the platform it approved during its convention this week in Tampa, Fla.
"We oppose any funding mechanism that would involve governmental monitoring of every car and truck in the nation," the GOP platform says of the VMT proposal.
