If the Chamber of Commerce wants to raise the gas tax, it should stop backing Republicans

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http://grist.org/politics/if-the-chamber-of-commerce-wants-to-raise-the-gas-tax-it-should-stop-backing-republicans/

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So it’s interesting to find this odd paragraph buried at the bottom of the Associated Press story on Obama’s proposal:

Bruce Josten, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive vice president for government affairs, praised the administration’s bill as “a positive step forward,” but said the chamber continues to support “raising federal gasoline and diesel taxes [as] the simplest, most straightforward way to address the revenue problem in the near term.”

The Chamber of Commerce is a Republican-aligned trade group that tries to influence the political process on behalf of big business. It donates heavily to Republican campaign committees, having already given $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association in the 2014 cycle. It makes big outside expenditures to boost Republican candidates. In the 2012 campaign cycle, it spent $35.7 million, “mostly attacking Democrats or supporting Republicans,” according to FactCheck.org. Just this week, it started airing ads on behalf of GOP Senate candidates. “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pumping money into ads for establishment Republican favorites in North Carolina, Georgia and Alaska, while pointedly calling them conservatives and highlighting their opposition to Washington bureaucrats,” the AP reported in a separate story this week. “The Chamber is also launching ads for Republican Senate candidates in Michigan and Montana, and is looking to lift a House candidate in North Carolina.”

And so it would seem strange that the chamber is so at odds with virtually every Republican in the country over the gas tax. The reason is that the chamber does not actually support limited government per se. It supports whatever is in the interests of its members, and businesses require working roads and railways. (The chamber did not respond to a request for comment.)

But big businesses would rather not have to pay for infrastructure themselves in the form of closed corporate tax loopholes. Much better to get all the regular folks to fund it through sales taxes, in this case on gasoline.