A Fee for Miles Driven Would Be Hard to Impose
It might be easier if applied at first only to commercial trucks, and not right away.
Maybe consider a VMT tax for commercial trucks.
Photographer: Dania Maxwell/BloombergSadly but predictably, the climate and infrastructure legislation in Congress has run into trouble over how to pay for it. It no longer seems viable to avert this question altogether and use deficit financing for the climate investments. Instead, we have a fresh debate over charging drivers a fee or tax based on vehicle miles traveled, something the Biden administration has rejected.
A vehicle-miles-traveled fee could raise significant revenue over the next decade, well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And, outside the White House, it has politically diversified support, from Senator John Cornyn and Representative Garret Graves on the right to Representative Peter DeFazio and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the left.