After all the hosannas about infrastructure’s importance, it’s unsettling how quickly faith falters when it comes to paying. For a future where we have a thriving, viable infrastructure-supported economy, the best idea is to pay for it using every means we can think of. That includes corporate income taxes and gas taxes to meet the demands of the moment and adding clauses to the legislation to create new sources of revenue, such as a coordinated vehicle-miles- traveled initiative and an infrastructure bank.

The Biden administration’s infrastructure plan would cost about $2 trillion and proposes increasing the corporate tax rate halfway back to its level before the 2017 tax cut, raising it from 21% to 28%. In theory, that would cover costs over an eight- to 10-year span.

Republicans are reportedly preparing a $600-billion infrastructure counter-proposal, without the administration’s inclusion of numerous non-infrastructure items, such as elder care. That plan certainly will involve no corporate tax increase. Stripping away the non-infrastructure features is useful truth in packaging.

我们认为，拜登政府提出的公司税收增加并不是不合时宜的。对于共和党人来说，一个更好的主意是提出较少的税收增加，而不是零增加，如果他们认真解决现实世界中的问题而不是将自己包裹在反税收横幅中。很少有人认为，国民经济将在28％的公司税率下​​大幅缩小并崩溃。它也不会损害流行流行的行业的恢复，例如旅行，当税率为35％的时候，就在短短一段时间之前就表现良好。

One persistent problem is the Highway Trust Fund. Since 2008, Congress has propped it up with more than $150 billion in transfers from the general fund. It will dwindle further as electric vehicles and fuel-efficient cars proliferate. The construction and engineering coalition is wise to call for Congress to leverage the progress made in individual states to date and create a comprehensive national vehicle-miles-traveled program to replace motor fuel taxes and fees. But that will take years to put in place. And other types of user fees are even more complex, if applicable at all. How such fees could ever be assessed for water and wastewater systems or broadband service is unclear—so user-fees have limited potential.

有很多方法可以考虑资金辩论。一种是考虑一些在反对气候变化的斗争中设想的转型基础设施计划，即存在的问题。另一个是将我们的水和电源的生存能力视为国家安全问题。这些原因还不够吗？换句话说，如果有强有力的基础设施主要是国家和地方问题而无需联邦资金和领导层，那么没有人成功地争论了这一立场。留下2021年未达到的联邦基础设施法案将是一项民族疏忽行为。