“So the idea now is to get states to bail out the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF), which they seem eager to do. Well the fix needs to take place in Washington, before we add to the problem. Do not let your state legislators buy into this scam of continuing redistribution of wealth.”
Here in CO, the talk among a lot of liberals and conservatives is not bail-out but keeping the gas tax money for ourselves and spending it ourselves. Not so sure the state can do any better a job than the feds. It has a huge, corrupt transit bureaucracy, just like the feds, but smaller. More money would fix that.
The other, and completely local problem in CO is that we have a taxpayer bill of rights (TABOR). Any tax increase has to go to the voters. Dems and many R’s despise it. But TABOR doesn’t apply to “fees” and the Democrat supreme court has held that practically any revenue enhancer can be called a fee by the legislature. The gas tax might then be classified as a fee and not subject to TABOR. So if CO took back the gas tax revenue, we would quickly become a state with the highest gas fees in the nation and those fees would fund every union pension fund in the state.
keeping the gas tax money for ourselves and spending it ourselves.
I don’t argue with that concept, but that should actually apply to all taxes on individuals as well, in other words all dollars going to the federal government should go through the state before going to Washington. State needs come first except for national defense.