OregonLive.com reports that Congressman Peter DeFazio, ranking minority member of the House Transportation Committee, “is betting that Americans will pay a penny more at the pump to pay for infrastructure investment, and he’s doubling down on the wager with the belief they wouldn’t even notice.” A bill DeFazio has introduced “would add about a penny per year to the 18.4-cent federal gas tax, revenue that could be leveraged in the bond market to raise an additional $17 billion a year. . . ” DeFazio told a group of reporters, “It’s a pathetically small increase . . ., and if anybody [in Congress] doesn’t have enough guts to vote for something that can do a $500 billion investment, that would create tens of thousands of jobs, they don’t belong here.”
