Advocates on and off Capitol Hill are mounting a new push to lift the gas tax as Republicans prepare to assume full control of Congress in January. Funding for the Highway Trust Fund will run out May 31. On 60 Minutes last month, officials including former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell used the specter of a major bridge or highway collapse to warn of the need for new investments. LaHood, a Republican who was once rebuked by the Obama White House for suggesting a switch to a mileage-based tax, is now going public on the gas tax, in his typically colorful style. "The best argument for doing it is is that America is one big pothole," he told me in a phone interview, "and America’s infrastructure is in the worst shape that we’ve seen in decades."

At the Capitol, Representatives Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, and Tom Petri, a Wisconsin Republican, summoned a different image to make their case: Ronald Reagan. Standing next to a cardboard cutout of the conservative icon, the congressmen pointed to the gas-tax hike Reagan signed in 1982 as an example of a time when Republicans and Democrats joined to support infrastructure. They propose increasing the tax by 15 cents over three years and then indexing it to inflation. so that Congress would not have to keep returning to the issue every few years. "That would solve the funding problem," Petri said by phone after the event.

Petri took a more optimistic view than LaTourette of the politics of raising the gas tax, arguing that the sustained drop in fuel prices would change the minds of his more conservative colleagues, particularly if they reach $2 a gallon in more and more areas. "I don’t think there’s any question that it’s going to change the dynamics and make it much more palatable," he said. But he warned of a lag between the politics and the market. "It sometimes takes a little while for institutions to adjust to changes in the real world. So it may not happen instantly."

While Petri gives the gas-tax proposal a bipartisan imprimatur, his support shouldn't be mistaken for a major act of political courage. After 36 years in the House, Petri is retiring from Congress in a few weeks, forcing Blumenauer to start anew in January. While he backed the tax increase under Reagan in 1982, he said he only recently endorsed Blumenauer's legislation. Both lawmakers have also blamed the Obama administration for opposing any increase in the tax, a move they said discouraged lawmakers in both parties from publicly embracing it. "Republicans have tended to shy away from sticking their head up too far, because the feeling was, you do it and then the president cuts you off at the knees," Petri said.