True North

That't the question many people here in Minnesota's Sixth District will ask DFL candidate El Tinklenberg once they hear about this article.

The political vision of a summer gas tax holiday died a quick death in Congress, losing to a view that federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel will have to go up if they go anywhere.

Despite calls from the presidential campaign trail for a Memorial Day-to-Labor Day tax freeze, lawmakers quickly concluded, with a prod from the construction industry, that having $9 billion less to spend on highways could create a pre-election specter of thousands of lost jobs.

Now, lawmakers quietly are talking about raising fuel taxes by a dime from the current 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline and 24.3 cents on diesel fuel.

I'd like to know if Mr. Tinklenberg would support this tax increase. The collapse of the I-35W Bridge was the reason why he jumped into the race. Mr. Tinklenberg thought there was a need then. Since then, nothing has happened that's made things better, at least from a federal perspective.

According to this article on WCCO's website, Mr. Tinklenberg "was lukewarm on a proposal to raise the federal gas tax to fix bridges" but he also said this:

"All of us knew that we could no longer tolerate sitting by while so many things were happening in our country that were the result of a kind of inattention that we were facing in our infrastructure," he said at a Capitol news conference, flanked by about three dozen supporters including red-shirted union workers.

If the inattention to our infrastructure is so great, how does Mr. Tinklenberg plan on paying for upgrading it? Does he think that this will all pay for itself? My bet is that he'd have no qualms voting for a tax increase. His biggest problem is admitting it before the election.

Unfortunately, I won't give Mr. Tinklenberg that much wiggle room. I'll assume that he favors increasing the gas tax unless he gives a compelling reason why he opposes increasing it.

Comments welcome at LFR.