On Infrastructure, California Goes Back to Basics

For the first time since 1989, California lawmakers this year passed a gas tax hike. The increase  by 12 cents a gallon on gasoline and 20 cents a gallon on diesel  will pay for a decade-long building program that will cost $54 billion. California is one of many states this year to raise its fuel taxes, but the state's sheer size makes the new transportation funding law significant. The Trump administration, by comparison, has broadly outlined a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure over a decade  only $200 million of which would come from the federal government. In other words, over the next decade, California will spend a quarter of what the federal government would spend on the entire country under Trump’s plan.