“President Joe Biden’s plans to spend billions of dollars on the United States’ crumbling roads and mass transit include a novel twist – making companies and wealthy households, rather than drivers and riders, pay the cost. Biden will unveil more details about the first stage of his infrastructure plan, which could be worth as much as $4 trillion, in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. Business groups and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been pushing Biden to raise U.S. fuel taxes, some of the lowest in the world, for the first time since 1993. They also want a new mileage tax that would sweep in electronic vehicles to plug holes in the national highway fund.”

“But the White House has rejected those ideas, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN on Monday . A gas tax is politically risky and would weigh more heavily on lower-income Americans, who often travel longer distances for work. Instead, Biden is expected to propose the biggest federal tax increase in decades, according to two sources familiar with the plan. It includes raising corporate income taxes back to the 28% rate in effect before the 2017 tax law, and increasing the marginal tax rate on high-earners, according to two sources familiar with the plan. White House aides say that Biden may also rely on some federal borrowing to fund the package, given historically low interest rates. Whatever the plan, it is likely to inspire heated debate among Republicans, Democrats, economists and academics about the right way to plug the holes in the U.S. economy opened by the vast spread of COVID-19. ‘The president has a plan to fix the infrastructure of our country… and he has a plan to pay for it,’ White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday. If members of Congress don’t like it, ‘we’re happy to look at their proposals,’ Psaki added” – Reuters.