DOUBLING DOWN ON CONSUMPTION TAXES:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the fund's budget shortfall will be about $15 billion every year. You can pretty easily chalk this up to the fact that the fund's coffers are sustained almost exclusively through the federal gas tax. Even as fuel efficiency has improved and Americans have cut back on driving, the tax itself hasn't been increased since 1993.

To solve the issue, Democrats want to raise the tax. Many Republicans want to slowly phase out the federal funding altogether and turn it over to the states. I think Republicans could actually attract Democrats to their position, provided a few crucial policy choices are made.

The most important thing that abolishing the Interstate Highway System will allow is for states to fund their highway infrastructure through tolls, which is strongly discouraged by the federal government. States would even have the option of taking the further step of privatizing their highways, as former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels did very successfully with one road in 2006.

Eliminating federal funding would also force states to abandon needlessly wasteful projects. One consequence of the DOT's need-based funding is that it encourages states to compete for dollars by wildly overstating how much infrastructure they actually need, even as the actual need continues to decline. Tolling would further reduce infrastructure demand by encouraging carpooling, shorter commutes, and alternative modes of transportation. With the big federal dollars unavailable, states will discover surprisingly quickly how many of their crucial infrastructure projects are not actually so crucial after all.

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