Source:Washington Examiner– life is a highway that some Americans ride all day long.

“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Tuesday said the imposition of a new tax on cars and trucks based on how many miles they drive would be one way of generating revenues for the federal Highway Trust Fund.

Joseph Kile, CBO’s assistant director for microeconomic studies, told the Senate Finance Committee that a tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) would help the Highway Trust Fund meet its spending goals, in particular because the Fund is already spending more than it collects through the federal gas tax.

But he also said the tax would better align highway costs with revenue generation, and promote the more efficient use of the highway system.”

From The Hill

With all this talk about our crumbling infrastructure and how we should fix it, with the Core of Engineers projecting that we have around 200B$ in infrastructure that needs to be repaired, everything from roads, bridges, airports, schools, our water, these are all well-paid and well- skilled jobs that could put thousands of people back to work. People that currently are not working right now.

Infrastructure investment is something that our country needs so we no longer have kids going to crumbling schools. And people driving on bridges that could collapse. We could ease our highway and road congestion with better roads and more roads. Get less people off the road which would be better for our environment and help bring down our high gas prices, with more trains, subway as well as Amtrak. But none of these things can be done if we don’t put in the work that has to be done to make this happen. By improving our crumbling infrastructure and expanding our infrastructure.

We are currently 14T$ in debt with a 1.6T$ Budget Deficit, money we have to pay back in  one way or the other. Thats just basic economics, there’s no such thing as free money, it has to come from somewhere, we can’t borrow the money indefinitely. Our gas tax is not financing our current infrastructure needs. So the idea of increasing that tax that would mostly just effect struggling middle and low-income people right now. Is basically off the table.

But there is something that we can do, create an infrastructure bank or service that would be self-financed and independent of the Federal Government. That would be responsible for infrastructure needs of the country. That would raise the money through the private sector to pay for these projects around the country. That business’s would invest in and make money off of. That the Federal Government, as well as state and local government’s could go to when they have infrastructure projects that they want work on. And this IB would decide if the project is worth doing or not. And if they decide it’s worth doing, would raise the money for and hire the company to do the work.

A national infrastructure bank makes good financial, economic and political sense, because it would provide a lot of good jobs for the country. It would pay for itself and operate independently with its own management. So Congress and the Administration can’t screw it up (one of the few things that they wouldn’t be able to screw up) and it would eliminate pork-barrel spending. So it’s something we should do as a country.