Sunday Evening Owls: Changing the gasoline tax with one thing that makes Twenty first Century sense

Evening Owls is a themed open thread showing at Day by day Kos seven days per week.

Gabrielle Gurley at The American Prospect writes—The Long and Winding Road to Replacing the Gas Tax. Can Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg persuade Congress that street consumer charges are the following large income factor?

Pete Buttigieg has parachuted in for a delicate touchdown on the Division of Transportation. There have been no Betsy DeVos-esque moments on the Rhodes Scholar’s affirmation listening to. “You understand what the hell you’re speaking about,” gushed Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, close to the tip of the previous South Bend mayor’s two-and-a-half-hour allure offensive. That offensive has additionally taken Buttigieg to late-night speak reveals and movie star newsmaker packages, the place he’s commiserated concerning the unhappy state of American infrastructure and what the Biden administration plans to do about it.

However feel-good tv blots out the issues of a sector cracking below the burden of early-Twenty first-century inaction. There’s a beautiful lack of urgency in Congress concerning the digital insolvency of the Freeway Belief Fund, which shores up roads and public transit with gas taxes that have been final elevated in 1993 and should not listed to inflation. President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg are on the spot to plot interim measures to handle the diminishing returns of fuel taxes as vehicles develop extra fuel-efficient and electrification looms—or to give you one thing higher.