Posted on 01/04/2015 11:52:21 AM PST by Olog-hai
The incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee says raising the federal fuel taxes is among the options under consideration to replenish the dwindling Highway Trust Fund.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota says all options must be looked at to fill an enormous shortfall when the existing highway legislation expires in May. …
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Why, Why WHY do the idiot GOPs do s**t like this? WHY?
He should have flatly ruled out a tax hike, not talked about leaving options open. That option should be CLOSED. The beast has enough revenue, no tax hikes, period.
To be fair Thune says he against a tax hike but we should “look at all options” or something like that.
No, we should NOT look at all options. Not that option. Stop being wishy washy, Johnny.
Everybody pays, but only some can use.
And the sole purpose of carpool lanes is to divert people to mass transit. It is NOT to improve the carrying capacity of the highway or its efficiency. In fact, it has an adverse effect by these measurements.
This is a frank admission by an officer of DART -- Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
The GOPe has always operated in this manner. Right back as far as when Eisenhower first instituted the interstates.
Exactly!
Great. Idiots.
“This is pretty much inevitable. For one thing, the Federal fuel tax isn’t indexed to inflation. So its purchasing power has eroded over time. Secondly, improvements in fuel efficiency reduce the tax revenue over time even if there is no change in the level of traffic on the nation’s highway system.”
One option is to end the Federal Highway Trust fund and let the states maintain the highways. Why tax at two levels (federal and state) to fund the same thing?
A good example is the lock and dam system on the Mississippi River and its tributaries. For one thing, a lot of these facilities are on river sections that are borders between states. But more importantly, these locks and dams support commerce across about 20 states, by my count. There's no reason to have individual states maintain these assets.
You can make the same case for most highways in the U.S. We often think of highways as commuter routes, but these roads are vital for freight transportation, too -- and state lines are pretty meaningless to that industry for all intents and purposes.
You mean we’re tens of trillions of dollars in debt...and there’s not enough money for highways? How is that even possible?
Copy that...I agree, somehow they were tipped to someone’s plans to start tracking people’s movements.
“You can make the same case for most highways in the U.S. We often think of highways as commuter routes, but these roads are vital for freight transportation, too — and state lines are pretty meaningless to that industry for all intents and purposes.”
I agree with federal maintenance of the waterways as long the the cost is paid through user fees. With respect to roads, consider that railroads are maintained by private firms, not the taxpayer. By building and maintaining interstate roads, the federal government subsidizes the trucking industry as it competes with railroads.
It's possible for two reasons:
1. About 30% of highway tax money is spent on public transit -- trains and busses that nobody rides.
2. Very little of the remainder is spent on repairing or upgrading our highways. Repairs and upgrades don't create ribbon-cutting ceremonies an photo ops. So most of the money is spent on new (and redundant or otherwise unnecessary) projects.
Isn’t the tax based on a gallon of gas? Surely,with lower prices,there is just as much or more gas sold these days. So,there should be no shortfall in the taxes,only in what these crooks think they can get away with because of reduced prices.. Would the taxes go down when the price goes back up?
If(big if) you are going to have new fuel taxes the only one that makes sense is a tariff on IMPORTED oil. That raises revenue and gives domestic producers a little help. A tax at the pump is the worst tax of all.
The Dems know how to throw better parties.
What this is probably about is Thune’s doing the bidding of farmers. Keep the tax on gas high to hide the cost of adding ethanol. Always follow the money.
If they do raise gas taxes, they won’t spend them on the roads. The revenue from gas taxes gets dumped into the general fund like everything else to be wasted and/or stolen. It’s a racket.
Thank you for replying Alberta's Child.
I’m not challenging the benefits of a national highway system. In fact, President Madison had noted the benefits of roads and canals for commerce and military purposes in his constitutionally required veto letter to Congress.
Again, regardless that the Founding States had made the federal Constitution to deliberately limit (cripple) the federal government’s powers, they had also made the Constitution amendable so that later generations of states could amend it to grant the feds new powers when the states deemed it appropriate. And given President Eisenhower’s popularity, I’m sure that the states would have ratified a national highway amendment to the Constitution.
Sadly, because the states “forgot” to appropriately amend the Constitution concerning a national highway system, a consequence of inexcusably widespread ignorance of the federal government’s constitutional limited powers imo, the Constitution-hating federal government got a free pass to unconstitutionally expand its powers when it authorized the highway system.
Again, 17A is spotted at “the scene of the accident” with respect to the misguided, citizen-controlled Senate unthinkingly allowing the federal government to create new powers for itself outside the framework of the Constitution.
What makes things worse is that Eisenhower was following in FDR’s footsteps with respect to highways. Add his being impressed with the Reichsautobahn system (especially because it helped speed Allied troops into Berlin) gave him the (IMHO) wrong idea.
Most of the governmental impetus was due to progressives’ need to control infrastructure, rather than to benefit the public. Since they came around, they had been consistently building up roads in order to challenge the dominance of rail, with Wilson even once taking over the railroads by creating the US Railroad Administration (USRA; yes, Amtrak and Conrail had a forerunner; Wilson used the “war emergency” as his excuse, and did it by executive order).
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