May 8, 2017 – Republicans are balking over President Trump’s openness to raising the federal gas tax to help pay for U.S. roads and highways – a politically fraught issue that lawmakers have avoided for years, according to The Hill. There are a handful of GOP lawmakers who are champions of increasing the gas tax, something that hasn’t happened in more than two decades. But the signals coming out of the White House appear to be at odds with GOP leadership and influential conservatives, who have repeatedly been put in the uncomfortable spot of having to square their positions with the president’s. “I oppose raising taxes, and I oppose adding to the debt,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of Republican Policy Committee and head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told The Hill. “There are a lot of ways we can do the funding [for infrastructure].”