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

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Pete Buttigieg, now the nineteenth secretary of transportation, shakes arms with Joe Biden after the Oct. 15, 2019, presidential debate.

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



Gabrielle Gurley at The American Prospect writes—The Long and Winding Road to Replacing the Gas TaxCan Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg persuade Congress that street consumer charges are the subsequent massive income factor?

Pete Buttigieg has parachuted in for a gentle 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 might be speaking about,” gushed Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, close to the top of the previous South Bend mayor’s two-and-a-half-hour appeal offensive. That offensive has additionally taken Buttigieg to late-night speak reveals and movie star newsmaker packages, the place he’s commiserated in regards to 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 underneath the burden of early-Twenty first-century inaction. There’s a gorgeous lack of urgency in Congress in regards to the digital insolvency of the Freeway Belief Fund, which shores up roads and public transit with gasoline taxes that had been final elevated in 1993 and usually are 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 automobiles develop extra fuel-efficient and electrification looms—or to provide you with one thing higher.