LaHood was confirmed by the US Senate January 21st. Prior to that, January 12th, Alex Steffen (Worldchanging) explained the problems with LaHood's nomination:
In case you haven't been following the news, LaHood is a conservative Illinois Republican with little transportation expertise and almost no administrative experience, who has earned a LCV lifetime voting score on critical environmental issues of 27 percent, and who maintains deep financial connections to the very industries he's now supposed to regulate. He may be no worse than most of those who've lead the Department of Transportation, but his appointment is a profoundly uninspiring vote for business as usual at a time when we need change, and an strong indication that the administration doesn't get that energy policy, technological innovation, urban planning, environmental sustainability and transportation are all bound up together, and no solution to our problems can be had without tackling them all together.
LaHood's appointment is so disappointing to transportation advocates who've been waiting eight years for change, that they're boiling with indignant disbelief, branding him "an unbelievably disastrous pick," "Status quo we can believe in" and "same.gov" (a dig at the Obama transition site, change.gov). As one insider summed it up: "It's a real read-it-and-weep moment."
In a sure sign of what a mistake the nomination was, Michael Tomasky (Labour Party print organ) compared the nomination of LaHood favorably to that of Tom Daschle's for HHS (Daschle had to withdraw his name when tax, lobbying and greed issues torpedoed his nomination).
Garance Franke-Ruta (Washington Post) reported LaHood delivered a "comprehensive memo" to the White House Wednesday "on how to jump-start high-speed rail service nationally". He bragged about that while speaking to reporters Thursday. He also admitted that he attempted to get House Republicans to vote for Barack's tiny package but they refused to reach out leading LaHood to declare, "I think I fell down on my responsibilities. I think they were looking for me to find a few in the House."
Possibly that was the reason for the Friday smack down? Or maybe they just didn't like his "comprehensive memo"?
At the White House, spokesmodel Robert Gibbs was asked about a tax change LaHood was proposing and whether this was going to be implemented by the president? Gibbs responded, "I can weigh in on it and say that it is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration."
It was a smack down and a number of reports are focusing rightly on that (such as Eric M. Weiss' Washington Post report). But there's another issue as well: What LaHood was proposing.
Currently, in the US, there is a tax on gas per gallon. LaHood was proposing switching to a tax per mile (as explained in the press conference, "Secretary LaHood told AP in an interview that he thinks we should look at this, going to miles driven taxes."). From Joan Lowy's "AP Interview: Transportation secretary says taxing how much we drive may replace gasoline tax" (AP):
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn--an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed.
Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled," the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said.
Most transportation experts see a vehicle miles traveled tax as a long-term solution, but Congress is being urged to move in that direction now by funding pilot projects.
Why can't gasoline taxes be counted on to continue to raise money for needed repairs and construction? Larry Copeland (USA Today) explained in September 2007:
Americans are driving cars that get better mileage, and more are driving vehicles that use fuels taxed at lower rates than gasoline, such as ethanol, or making their own fuel and not being taxed. That means gas tax revenue isn't growing nearly as fast as the number of miles driven.
The Senate was tax per mile in 2005. Edward Epstein (San Francisco Chronicle) reported in April of 2005:
The idea is simple but technologically daunting -- base gas taxes on miles driven instead of on gallons of fuel bought. And advocates say the reason for such a change is also simple -- although such fuel-efficient vehicles as hot-selling hybrids pay less in gas taxes, they're still out on the nation's roads contributing to congestion and wear and tear on an aging infrastructure.
A switch in the way the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax is levied could be in the offing, making it more of a user fee than a tax. By unanimous voice vote, the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation Tuesday to establish a 15-member commission to report back within two years on ways to ensure enough tax revenue to pay for the nation's highway, bridge and public transit programs.
The 15-member National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission is set to release their final report this week. Though why bother if the White House is saying they do not support a switch in the taxation system? Regardless, Thursday, the Commission releases the report which "will offer a roadmap for sweeping reform of the nation's transportation infrastructure funding and finance framework. The Commission will offer specific recommendations for increasing investment in transportation infrastructure while at the same time moving the Federal Government away from reliance on motor fuel taxes towards more direct fees charged to transportation infrastructure users."
Was LaHood off on his own tangent or reflecting the Commission's soon-to-be-released recommendations? Since LaHood's been seen publicly with two of the commissioners in the last two weeks, our guess would be he was reflecting the upcoming recommendations. We'll be following the release of Thursday's report.
In the meantime, LaHood's been turned into a joke by the White House. Kind of like the US Dept of Transportation's website which repeatedly gives the same message on nearly all click options currently:
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