Poll: Drivers pocketing gas savings

Forty percent of U.S. residents are using money they are saving at the pump with record low gas prices to pay for other routine expenses, according to poll released on Tuesday. 

The survey, which was conducted by the Des Moines, Iowa-based Principle Financial Group, found that U.S. residents were primarily using gas savings on “on regular expenses such as groceries, utilities or housing payments.” 

The poll found another 31 percent of its responded have been using savings at the pump to reduce debt, and another 23 percent have putting the extra money into savings accounts. 

{mosads}The findings come at a time when there has been talk in Washington about increasing the 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax to help pay for a new transportation funding bill. 

The current infrastructure is scheduled to expire in May, and lawmakers are struggling to come up with a way to pay for an extension. 

Transportation advocates have pointed to low gas prices as a reason to consider raising the gas tax for the first time in more than 20 years. 

The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Tuesday is $2.38, compared to an average price of $3.57 on April 7, 2014, according to the AAA Auto Club.

Lawmakers in both parties have expressed a desire to pass a long-term transportation funding bill this year, but consensus on a way to pay for it has been elusive. 

The traditional source of transportation funding has been the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax that was established in the 1930s. The tax has not been increased since 1993, even as cars have become more fuel-efficient in recent years. 

The federal government typically spends about $50 billion per year on transportation projects, but the gas tax only brings in $34 billion.

Lawmakers have turned to other areas of the federal budget to close the $16 billion gap, and Ryan and others have begun talking about passing another extension now to prevent a construction shutdown this summer.