Where the Rubber Meets the Road on Infrastructure

Charlie Cook: “There is a certain Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland aspect to watching some normally tax-averse Republicans pushing for President Biden to index the gas tax to inflation and impose a user fee on electric vehicles as part of the infrastructure package. While lawmakers in both parties surely have reasons to support or oppose those policies on the merits, some on the GOP side sure seem to be trying to entice Biden to break his pledge of not raising taxes for those making less than $400,000 a year.”

“For his part, Biden seems to be digging in his heels, knowing that if he were to go along on this hike, he would never hear the end of charges that he had broken his promise, a la George H.W. Bush. But Biden is fighting both the gas-increase and mileage-fee proposals tooth and nail, not a usual occurrence for Democrats who are rarely morally opposed to tax hikes. The reality in modern times is that there have been two major parties—a tax-and-spend party, which would be Democrats, and a borrow-and-spend party, obviously Republicans.”