As you travel around South Carolina, it is becoming more and more evident that our roads need additional funding. Since the last 3-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase was signed into law by then-Gov. Carroll Campbell in 1987, the cost of paving a road has increased five-fold, while our state’s 16.75 cents fuel tax has remained the same. Clearly, something has to give.

While there are many competing fuel tax increase plans in the Legislature, our organization prefers Gov. Nikki Haley’s plan because it accomplishes two goals: It raises needed revenue for our roads by increasing the fuel tax by 10 cents per gallon over three years (raising nearly $400 million), and it lowers South Carolina’s highest-in-the-Southeast income tax to 5 percent over a period of 10 years.

By passing the Haley plan, the General Assembly will deliver a two-fold economic boost: needed money for infrastructure, which helps attract more corporate investment, and a lower income tax rate, which many retirees and corporate leaders consider when relocating. The critics who say South Carolina cannot sustain the budget cuts needed to lower the income tax rate are discounting normal revenue growth.

As South Carolina’s population has grown, along with more economic development, the state budget has grown by hundreds of millions of dollars a year in normal economic times. In a worst-case scenario where the economy suffers an unlikely slowdown, the income tax cuts could be tapered in over a longer period.