Bugs Bunny, White Squirrels and the Gas Tax
EDITORIAL
Just raise the gas tax
It’s the obvious choice to pay for America’s roads
…National gas prices are averaging around $2.85 a gallon. There has not been a better time in recent years for Congress to take the difficult but necessary step of increasing the federal gas tax to put the nation’s Highway Trust Fund on sound long-term footing.
A growing number of federal lawmakers — mostly Democrats but with a sprinkling of Republicans — have begun calling for an increase in the federal excise tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gas, which has not been increased since 1993. They include Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who has proposed nearly doubling the current fuel tax…
…an increase similar to the one proposed by Blumenauer could provide a long-term extension of the trust fund…
Lawmakers should stop avoiding the obvious and raise the federal gas tax.
We Respond & our Comments
For Progressives like Rep. Blumenauer (we used to call them “Liberals”) the answer is usually simple: “Just raise the (fill in the blank) tax.” Any tax. Any time.
But we have a few questions for Rep. Blumenauer and his merry crew of taxers about how Highway Trust Fund money has been spent:
Might we have more money for highways if the Feds hadn’t blown:
- $850 million for 2,772 “scenic beautification” landscaping projects?
- $1.6 million for morning cartoon cruises with Bugs Bunny in Oklahoma?
- $112,000 for a white squirrel sanctuary?
- $84 million for road kill prevention & similar programs?
- $313 million for “behavioral research”?
- $16 million for transportation museums?
- $520 million for sidewalks and bikepaths?
We could save tons of your and our dollars by foregoing projects such as those above. Or we could “Just raise the gas tax.”
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