This is a memo dated December 1, 1958 within the White House Bureau of the Budget – from Paul Sitton, the highway analyst (who would later go on to be the first head of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration) to Director Maurice Stans. In it, Sitton outlines the Bureau’s recommendation to increase federal gasoline and diesel excise taxes by 50 percent (from 3.0 cents per gallon to 4.5 cents per gallon) for the full duration of the Interstate Construction program and the Highway Trust Fund in order to avert a coming insolvency in the Trust Fund and to fund the latest increased cost estimate. Sitton also criticizes the Commerce Department’s proposal for a more temporary tax increase.

Original located in the “P2-7/3 Budget and Financing to 1959” folder in Box 96 of the Subject Files of the Director, 1962-1961 (52.1) series of the Records of the Bureau of the Budget at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.