Posted on 01/25/2015 11:12:00 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The president was a conservative's conservative. He had campaigned on reducing taxes and made it his legacy. But when a gas tax increase was proposed, it was a different story. In his weekly radio address, he said, "We simply cannot allow this magnificent (highway) system to deteriorate beyond repair."
That was 1982. The president was Ronald Reagan.
Unfortunately, the disrepair Reagan feared has come to pass. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Highway Trust Fund is severely underfunded. A 10- to 15-cent a gallon increase would provide enough money to meet the Highway Trust fund needs for the next 10 years.
It deserves bipartisan support.
The American Society of Civil Engineering gave the nation's highways a grade of D in 2013. Californians would give them an F.
Call it a user fee, if we must, to appease the anti-tax crusaders. Reagan did. Several Republican governors are justifying state gas tax increases that way.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, told the Silicon Valley Leadership Group last year that the gas tax was problematic because vehicles are using less gasoline. It's a problem in the long run, for sure. But something has to happen now. As highways and bridges deteriorate, the cost of repair rises exponentially.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports a gas tax increase. The largely Republican organization knows how important safe and functional transportation is to the country's economic health. It needs to convince Congress. Advertisement
Sen. John Thune, R-N.D., the third-ranking Senate Republican, is on board. So is Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Modernizing infrastructure should be a conservative goal because of the high costs that crumbling roads place on businesses and drivers.
(Excerpt) Read more at contracostatimes.com ...
The Contra Costa Times is invoking the Gipper to support something that I’m not ready to accept.
The new Republican (GOPe) majority will end up raising our taxes sooner or later, mark my words.....
and where does the money they collect today go??
The federal tax is collected at the refinery. Cost to collect the tax is about $0.009, less than a penny of tax administrative cost per dollar of tax collected.
Because Congress is afraid to raise the tax, alternative means of raising highway repair funds are in the works, most notably the Vehicle Miles Traveled tax (VMT).
The cost to collect VMT is about 20 cents on the dollar. It is a wildly inefficient way to raise funds for federal road repairs.
VMT has one advantage, though, reps in Congress don't have to make a direct vote in favor of raising taxes.
They can raise the tax to 150% and still come back in a few years and ask for more.
“If you make less that 250k a year , you will not see your taxes raised ONE DIME”
Another Lie from Ohdumba.
it’s funny that fpor decades there was plenty of money fro mthe gas taxes already inplace for roads bruidges etc, but now all of a sudden there isn’t? Where’s the m oney going if not for roads?
Maybe if they didn’t siphon so many of the dollars into mass transit and other nonsense there would be enough money for roads, bridges, etc.
I cannot accept a federal gas tax increase, because about 25 percent of it goes to mass transit — which, until the 1960s, was mostly a private affair — as well as bike paths, beautification and local road projects that shouldn’t see a lick of federal subsidies.
I think that states and private companies are in a much better position to deal with transportation than the federal government, which cannot balance the budget, even to save us from economic and societal collapse.
There is a bill in Congress that would radically reduce the federal gas tax and hand most transportation responsibilities back to the states. It’s a good start.
“They can raise the tax to 150% and still come back in a few years and ask for more.”
***
This is why, before any taxes are raised, there should be an audit by an independent auditor.
In my state, we have a state gasoline tax and a couple of local taxes ostensibly to improve roads and bridges and to help fund mass transit. Every year one or more of these taxes are raised just based on the transportation department’s say so. The department cries the blues and taxes go up. No one questions where the money goes.
Meanwhile, roads are a mess, bridges crumble and the transit system is swirling the bowl.
17% of the Highway trust fund goes to light rail, bike trails, pedestrian paths and the like. 5% goes to cleaning out underground storage tanks. Congress and the president have been raiding that fund and consequently, highway maintenance has suffered. That was deliberate—leftists don’t like highways and mass transit plans are a key element in implementing Agenda 21.
Stop spending the trust fund on non-highway expenses and you don’t have to raise gas taxes.
Besides, if they raise gas taxes, Congress will just figure out how to spend it on stuff they want, not highways.
Unintended consequences, mandate better gas mileage and get less tax revenue. What about the government doing more with less like they’ve been telling us for years?
ANY federal or even STATE energy taxes are OBSCENE...
they raise the PRICES of quite literally EVERYTHING....
ONLY an idiot would be for ANY energy tax..
Regulation MAYBE....... TAXES NO...
Eliminate at least a majority of the waste, corruption and boondoggles in highway construction and maintenance first. Then, and only then, we can talk about raising gas taxes.
We just dumped the better part of a trillion dollars into infrastructure, roads and other ‘shovel ready jobs’ projects. Let’s have an audit for where all that money went first before we spend one additional cent.
Why do the fags in Washington need to impose this “tax”? (Actually, it’s thievery). Why not let the states do it and let THEM fix the roads and bridges?
If they stopped spending on bike trails, garages, museums, public education and graffiti removal, maybe there’s enough left to resurface crumbling roads.
It’s the SPENDING, stupid.
Oh, and the LYING CROOKS that pollute our government.
Blow up the bureaucracy!
I am not ready to accept it either. This is just another BS attempt to get more money that they can use for other things than intended. Anytime something good for the consumer appears in the form of significantly lower prices for a product, sniveling greedy opportunists in government start fabricating dire needs for this and that so they can raise taxes. It’s BS. Spend the gas tax money already collected on ROADS and BRIDGES and not silly programs or studies or political favoritism and they roads and bridges could be fixed. Not no, but HELL no.
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