Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wants to raise all kinds of taxes to pay for a slate of progressive policy proposals, including universal health care, universal child care, a plan to provide affordable housing and an initiative that would give students loan relief. But one tax the 2020 Democratic presidential contender isn’t so hot on raising is the federal gas tax, which hasn’t been lifted since 1993 from 18.4 cents per gallon. “I’m open to the conversation, but what worries me is it falls hardest on working people. When I talk about raising taxes, what I really want to see is I want to see an ultra-millionaire’s tax,” Warren said Monday at a CNN town hall when asked whether she supported raising the gax tax to pay for infrastructure needs.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Raising the gas tax to pay for investments to the country’s crumbling roads, bridges and waterways is an idea that has bipartisan support in Washington. That proposal is backed by both the Chamber of Commerce, which recommends hiking the tax by 25 cents over five years, and the labor organization AFL-CIO. The increase would generate an additional $375 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Chamber. President Donald Trump also supports the move, as well as many Democrats in Congress, who note that the burden of paying for new infrastructure has increasingly fallen on states and localities. “The saying, ‘If you want to dance, you have to pay the fiddler,’ could never have been more true,” Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.) said at a recent House Ways and Means Committee hearing on how to finance an infrastructure overhaul. But anti-tax conservatives oppose raising the gas tax, arguing that it’s not needed and that it would hurt low-income families ― which is interestingly the same concern Warren expressed on Monday. The senator says she would rather roll back the GOP’s tax cuts on corporations and levy a 2 percent tax on assets over $50 million and a 3 percent tax on assets over $1 billion. “I want to see taxes on the top. And then let’s use that to help subsidize what it is that we really want to see: Cleaner vehicles. That’s the direction I’d much rather see us go,” Warren said Monday at the CNN town hall.

“I want to see taxes on the top. And then let’s use that to help subsidize. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)