Columnist: Raising gas tax is win/win; Nat'l Commission recommends raising gas taxes 50%

How many times do we have to see this play before we admit that it always ends the same way?

Which play? The one where gasoline prices go up, pressure rises for more fuel-efficient cars, then gasoline prices fall and the pressure for low-mileage vehicles vanishes, consumers stop buying those cars, the oil producers celebrate, we remain addicted to oil and prices gradually go up again, petro-dictators get rich, we lose. . . .

The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1) Price matters — when prices go up people change their habits. 2) You need a systemic approach. . .

There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes . . .

The same is true in geopolitics. A gas tax reduces gasoline demand and keeps dollars in America, dries up funding for terrorists and reduces the clout of Iran and Russia . . .

Which one of these things wouldn’t we want? A gasoline tax “is not just win-win; it’s win, win, win, win, win,” says the Johns Hopkins author and foreign policy specialist Michael Mandelbaum. “A gasoline tax would do more for American prosperity and strength than any other measure Obama could propose.”

The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel, wants to raise the federal gasoline tax from the current 18.4 cents per gallon to 28.4 cents per gallon. Diesel fuel would see a raise of between 12 and 15 cents per gallon.

At the same time, the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation. . . .

“I’m not excited about a gas tax increase, but the reality is our current gas tax doesn’t pay for upkeep of the system we have now,” Adrian Moore, vice president of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank in Los Angeles, and a member of the highway revenue commission told the AP. “We can either let the roads go to hell or we can pay more.” . . .

The estimated annual gap between revenues and the investment needed to improve highway and transit systems was about $105 billion in 2007, according to a study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. Their research also projected that the gap will increase to $134 billion in 2017 under current trends.