FROM DC: The GOP’s Smaller Infrastructure Bill Goes All-In On Cars

Senate Republicans celebrated Earth Day by releasing a counter-offer to President Biden’s infrastructure plan that would deepen America’s dependence on gas-powered cars.

In a fact sheet delivered to Biden on Thursday morning and later posted on Twitter, a group of GOP lawmakers led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) outlined the broad strokes of the “Republican Roadmap,” a $568-billion package that would bolster federal infrastructure spending over five years.

The legislation — which is less than a quarter of the size of Biden’s $2.25-billion American Jobs Plan — would more than double the amount of funding dedicated to roads and bridges compared to Democrats’ package, while slashing funding for mass transportation by a quarter and outright eliminating funding for care infrastructure, zoning reform, and housing, all of which advocates have argued are particularly essential to decarbonizing the sector. It also axes new programs devoted to electric car adoption, improving safety for vulnerable road users, and reconnecting Black neighborhoods that were destroyed by the interstate highway system, among other cuts.

The outline of the plan acknowledges the importance of readying American communities for “extreme weather events and natural disasters,” but does not acknowledge the existence of climate change. The transportation sector has been the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in America since 2015. (See chart, right.)

What the GOP fact sheet failed to outline, though, is how the bill would be paid for, besides a vague commitment to “repurpose unused federal spending” likely related to COVID relief and a package of unspecified user fees to ensure that electric vehicle drivers pay their fair share.

In addition to somehow funding $299 billion in highway improvements and repair, the GOP presumably hopes these mystery user fees will somehow “shore up any infrastructure related trust fund that is facing a revenue shortfall.” But the plan did not clarify how that could be accomplished without raising the federal gas tax, which lawmakers from both parties have declined to do for the last 28 years, or further raiding the Treasury, as the government has been doing to stabilize the Highway Trust Fund ever since. Advocates were quick to point out that an electric fee alone certainly wouldn’t do it, especially without any federal investment in EV adoption and charging to increase the share of greener vehicles on the road. Fewer than 2 percent of all cars sold in 2019 were plug-ins.

Senate Democrats had already rejected the GOP counter-offer before it was even released. But if the Biden administration continues to insist on passing its bill with bipartisan support, our national transportation outlook may get a lot dirtier soon.