Gas taxes pay for most highway construction and maintenance.
If taxes aren’t raised when the cost of building and maintaining the highway system goes up, the infrastructure will gradually deteriorate.
Gas taxes are not the most logical way to pay. That would be a user fee per mile adjusted by vehicle weight. (There are, of course, perfectly legitimate arguments against such a method of paying for roads.)
I don’t like paying higher taxes any more than anybody else, but if conservatives are not to just sound stupid, when they criticize higher taxes they need to describe how they propose necessary services be paid for.
And how would such a fee be measured and collected? How much government do you want involved with your day to day affairs?
Driving more miles uses more gasoline. Vehicles that weigh more, tend to use more gasoline. The current method is reasonably effective at those goals.
The biggest problem I have with dedicated road taxes is that they are not dedicated to be spent on roads. My gasoline consumption should not pay for pedestrian parks and bike paths.
“That would be a user fee per mile adjusted by vehicle weight.”
I've heard it argued that gas taxes pretty much do this already.
Although not perfectly linear, fuel mileage tracks roughly with vehicle weight - the heavier a vehicle, the more fuel it uses per mile, and thus, a per gallon tax on fuel means that heavier vehicles pay more per mile than lighter vehicles.
It's true that the relationship isn't perfect, but it produces roughly the same effect with a lot less government than I've seen proposed to charge per-mile taxes, which usually include tracking the actual driving of individual drivers by the government. Not a conservative solution at all.
sitetest
“Gas taxes pay for most highway construction and maintenance. If taxes aren’t raised when the cost of building and maintaining the highway system goes up, the infrastructure will gradually deteriorate.”..
Wisconsin went through just that under the then Governor Jim Doyle. Doyle would rob money from the Transportation fund to cover all his other expenses which, in turn caused great setbacks to Wisconsin’s roads. Just this past year, as the Wis. coffers improved, a new law was passed to insure NO (that means ZERO) funds can be taken from the Transportation budget to pay for anything else. Time will tell what effect that has on the rest of the state but I can assure you, our roads will be in much better shape from now on. (I sit on our Country Highway/Public Works Committee)
Here's an idea: Why not spend the money that was collected for it's intended purpose instead of blowing it on bullsh!t projects? How's that for starters?
With the money they collect we should be driving on roads paved with gold!
My bet is they already receive that as well at least partially. 18 wheelers must have permits {taxes} paid in all states driven through or used too plus they had to log their miles driven in any state. Some states even required a minimal fuel purchase there or paying a penalty. When I was driving a rig years ago we had a big notebook filled with state permits. My bet is tax diversions for funding projects elsewhere.
True, but conservatives are correct in deploring the gas taxes spent on light-rail boondoggles.