The debate over how to pay for the nation’s roads, bridges and transit systems is leading some normally anti-tax Republicans to embrace higher levies on motorists—even a new one based on miles driven instead of fuel purchased.

But some Democrats who have supported the idea of charging a mileage fee are now opposed. They see infrastructure as an economic stimulus measure and want it paid for by corporate taxes.

That change of positions has Washington observers scratching their heads.

“If you took the positions and went back 10 years, you would say, ‘What?’” said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.

The debate about whether motorists or corporations should foot the bill is threatening to scuttle negotiations between President Joe Biden and Senate Republicans for a massive infrastructure plan. Biden pulled out of one-on-one talks with West Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but the White House has said he is still engaged with a separate, bipartisan group of senators despite some Democrats agitating for their party to go it alone.

The bipartisan Senate group has agreed to pitch a $1.2 trillion eight-year infrastructure spending package to Biden, according to people familiar with the deliberations, an amount that’s still well below the $1.7 trillion Biden had proposed in his direct talks with Capito.

Although the president is in the U.K. for the Group of Seven summit, the Democrats in the bipartisan group went to the White House on Thursday. “Questions need to be addressed, particularly around the details of both policy and pay fors, among other matters,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.

Indexing the gasoline tax—currently 18.4 cents per gallon—to a measure of inflation has been discussed by the bipartisan group working on a compromise plan, according to Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who’s taken a prominent role in those talks. He said it wouldn’t raise much money.

Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said Thursday he’s in favor of indexing the gas tax. Still, it’s unclear whether the White House would endorse such a move.

As recently as two months ago, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the the so-called vehicle-mile tax was under consideration in the Biden administration as a way for all motorists to pay for the upkeep of roads. The advantage of the VMT is that it would offset losses in the federal gas tax brought on by the growing sales of electric cars.

But the White House has since reversed course, saying it saying it would violate Biden’s pledge not to raise middle class taxes.

“I’m working hard to find common ground with Republicans when it comes to the American Jobs Plan, but I refuse to raise taxes on Americans making under $400,000 a year to pay for it,” Biden tweeted on Tuesday. “It’s long past time the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share.”

Democrats have leaned into the idea of raising taxes on large corporations, including some that saw their taxes lowered during the Trump administration.

“This view that lowering taxes on the rich people is good for the economy there’s no evidence that it is,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said Wednesday. “They would rather increase for the $60,000-per-year person the gas tax than for a $300 million per-year person raise their income tax.”

Republicans Opposed
Republicans have balked at the idea of raising corporate taxes to pay for roads.

“If you look at the last 30 years where we have passed in a bipartisan way, infrastructure bills here in Congress, they’ve always been predicated on user fees of some sorts,” Representative Darin LaHood, an Illinois Republican, said during a May 19 House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

“But instead, today, we’re talking about a diversion of the tax code talking about raising corporate rates to fund infrastructure,” he said.

Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn suggested last month that a 25-cent tax be imposed on every mile driven by heavy trucks to raise $33 billion a year—about as much as the fuel tax.

Truckers immediately raised objections.

“We’re not opposed to VMT,” said Bill Sullivan, executive vice president for advocacy at the American Trucking Associations, which lobbies for large trucking companies. “What we’re violently opposed to is this idea of ‘Let’s just do this for trucks.’”

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