World Infrastructure Leader on Trump’s Gas Tax: No Silver Bullet to Fill $3.5T Gap
“We should be open to all options, there is no one silver bullet to solve all of the issues we have with a $3.5 trillion infrastructure gap here in the United States," Michael Burke, CEO of one of the world’s largest infrastructure companies, AECOM, told the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. “We need all of the arrows, the gas tax is one of them that should be on the table, repatriation of international profits is another one that should be on the table, as well as incentivizing the private sector to bring private capital into the public-private partnership model.”
Burke said revenue raised from an increased gas tax would not be diverted away from infrastructure. “First of all, the gas tax does that. The highway bill and the gas tax is wholly dedicated to transportation, we’ve seen many states around this country that have implemented a wholly dedicated sales tax for transportation initiatives.”
Burke said he's optimistic that the White House would get rid of much of the red tape in order to speed up the process of funding and implementing infrastructure projects.
“We heard yesterday here the Milken Conference in Los Angeles from the White House that they are interested in taking the ten year regulatory process for infrastructure and reducing it to two years. That will significantly increase the efficiency of deployment of capital hat we’re talking about.”