Should we abolish federal gasoline excise tax?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Support. I've never understood why we have taxes that fund singular programs - seems inefficient. How hard would it be to fund transportation infrastructure out of general tax revenue (income, corporate, etc)? Besides that, regressive taxes of all sorts cause unnecessary financial strain on the lower class, which is economically destructive.

It is tax inefficient. Excise tax is supposed to offset the marginal cost of regulation, hence the per unit tax, not ad valorem. But political economics theory says that Congress will pass what the people will allow. At the time, rich people did most of the driving, and gasoline excise tax was an easy win.

The gas tax is a stand-in for vehicle mileage at a time when odometers were not necessarily standard equipment nor reliable measures of distance covered.  While weather can cause roads to deteriorate, the amount of traffic is a greater influence.  Certainly South Carolina gas taxes could use an increase as our roads are not as good as they should be.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

This is one of the most confused- and confusing- things I've read on here in some time.

The fact that the federal gas tax has not kept pace with either a) inflation, or b) new road/bridge/transit construction, or c) the accelerating repair needs of facilities that have reached the end of their useful and/or safe lifetime, and must be rehabbed or replaced, would all be reasons I think to make an increase even more urgent.  And this holds even if you thought 18.4 cents/gallon was adequate in 1993 (which I consider obviously untrue, but will grant for the sake of argument).

Furthermore, I have little idea what you mean by "targeting the oil/gas companies" and how it's supposed to be an adequate an/or sufficiently different substitute- and this may sound harsh but I suspect that you don't either.

I was merely stating a fact, namely that the federal gasoline tax is quite low. Abolishing it really would not accomplish much in terms of savings for the average person. It'd only take away from the already low and diminishing highway fund. However, I'd be hesitant to raise it, as it is a quite regressive tax that targets the low and middle classes.

As far as raising revenue goes, I'd rather put the burden on the oil and gas companies. That would include eliminating their tax breaks and subjecting them to significant taxation, which would ideally be an excess profits tax.

But unless you control the prices they can charge, they'll simply pass the tax on to their consumers.  So it won't really affect the companies.  Price controls are generally^* an awful idea unless you want to make a product less available.  The same is true with an "excess" profits tax, however it is structured.

^* The only exception I know of to the awfulness of price controls are those that keep prices of essential goods and services from being jacked up during a crisis that temporarily increases demand and/or limits supplies.