Poll: 55% back gas tax hike to repair roads

Congress hasn’t raised the federal gas tax since 1993 when Bill Clinton was president, but a narrow majority of Americans would support an increase to help fix crumbling roads and bridges in their own states.

Fifty-five percent of Americans in a Bloomberg National Poll say they would back an increase. The concept has bipartisan support, with majorities of Republicans (51 percent) and Democrats (67 percent) backing the idea.

Americans are tired of the condition of their roads and interstate highways and the 56,000 structurally deficient bridges nationwide, said Ray LaHood, a Republican and former U.S. transportation secretary under President Barack Obama who supports raising the gas tax.

“People are fed up,” LaHood said. “They’re ready for politicians to take action.”

President Donald Trump has promised a plan to invest $1 trillion over 10 years upgrading deteriorating roads, bridges, airports and other assets. The White House said that while no decision has been made about raising the federal gas tax to help pay for the improvements, all options are on the table.

Trump told Bloomberg in May that increasing the gas tax is “something that I would certainly consider.” He described the idea as supported by truckers “if we earmarked money toward the highways,” though thenWhite House spokesman Sean Spicer later said the president wasn’t endorsing the idea.

Still, New York developer Richard LeFrak, whom Trump tapped to help lead an infrastructure advisory council, has said that even adjusting the gas tax for inflation “would go a long way towards fixing the roads” and that voters wouldn’t punish politicians for raising the levy.

Twenty-six states have raised or updated their gas taxes since 2013, including eight this year, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonprofit research organization in Washington.

Poll participant Rae Sobocinski, 51, a Republican stay-at-home mother from Greenville, S.C., said she’d support a federal increase. The Republican-led state recently raised its fuel taxes by 12 cents a gallon over six years.

“Our city is growing like gangbusters, and yet we have some really poor roads with potholes everywhere,” said Sobocinski. “Maybe a gas tax would be a way to fix that.”

Raising the gas tax could hit rural voters, who overwhelmingly chose Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as well as middle- and working-class people he has promised to favor in his tax policy.

The telephone poll of 1,001 American adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, higher among subgroups. It was conducted July 8-12 by Iowa-based Selzer & Co.