The headline seemed familiar, as though plucked from a different time: “Gas prices break $2 barrier in Clark County.”
But while consumers have grown accustomed over the years to reading about gas prices breaking one barrier or another, the alternate-universe reality this weekend was that prices have fallen below $2 a gallon at some outlets in Clark County. That’s a far cry from the roughly $4 a gallon motorists were paying in early July — a situation that has generated numerous policy implications.
What, for example, should the federal government do about the national gas tax? The federal tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, used primarily to fund the Highway Trust Fund, has not been raised in two decades. In the meantime, inflation has rendered the Highway Trust Fund nearly insolvent even as infrastructure projects go largely ignored. Late last year, Congress propped up the highway fund with a poorly conceived plan to allow the use of “pension smoothing” to help provide revenue. With the nation’s bridges and roads drifting toward disrepair, some long-term, fiscally responsible solutions are required.
And what, for example, should the state government do to fund infrastructure? Washington’s gas tax of 37 cents a gallon is among the highest in the nation, and yet the Legislature has failed in recent years to approve a transportation package that would provide for economically vital projects.