Don’t raise gas taxes if other drivers are going to exempted from paying into the roads.
Electric and hybrid could be assessed annual licensing costs.
Doesn’t make sense to put a highway tax on electricity or else your hone AC usage will also be taxes for toads.
““The last thing we want to do is pass historic tax relief and then undo that, so we are not going to raise gas taxes.”
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So they will raise taxes last! Again..... and again, and.........
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Sending money to Mexifornia is even worse than flushing it down the Obamalet.
In before somebody starts harping about the National Review being a #NeverTrumper publication.
Well, when your gas tax dollars go to subsidizing busses and ferries, what do you expect?
This is the problem in a nutshell. We have enough money thru abusive high taxes but the money always get diverted to liberal social programs and causes.
I would make several quick points here, some of which reflect what he and Milton Friedman have said:
1. It's theoretically possible that U.S. motorists actually pay MORE for their use of the highway system than it really costs to accommodate them. It's not easy to figure this out because the method of financing this infrastructure is more deficient than the amount of money that is collected through taxes and user fees (tolls).
2. Related to the previous point, the best description I've ever heard about the dysfunctional nature of financing our highway system was from someone in a D.C. think tank who likened our fuel tax system to a prepaid all-you-can-eat buffet on a cruise ship. The cruise line operator doesn't care about the quality of the food they serve because the customers have already paid for it up front, and the customers have no financial constraint on how much they eat for the same reason. The end result is that the customer gets crappy food, and eats too much of it anyway. This is a perfect comparison to a congested highway.
3. I find the idea of operating public roads as utilities intriguing -- and it would probably work much better this way for all the reasons the author describes. My one overriding condition would be that the public utilities that operate these roads should first be obligated to buy them from the states and refund the taxpayers whose government used its eminent domain authority to take possession of the rights-of-way in the first place.
I don’t think we can afford to maintain our highway infrastructure AND 25 million illegal aliens.
I wish Mr. Poole would ‘retire’, once and for all. He publishes this garbage EVERY YEAR, and the reaction is always the same - WE DON’T WANT IT! We don’t want the tracking system and behavior control that comes from real-time tolling, and we don’t want the tolling in the first place.
If he loves those foreign systems so much, why doesn’t he just move there and quit making us have to suffer through his pencil-neck view on how to improve the latest form of Communism...or whatever.
Gotta have bike lanes.
It’s in the Constitution.
/s
The Interstate System works just fine for me, with the exception of the jamming of traffic and highways to get under the south end of Lake Michigan and the long stretch of no crossings of the Rockies between I80 and I90.
How in the H*ll do you expect us to pay for all the illegals coming into our country. Divert the gas tax money so illegals can get free medical care, free housing, ebt cards,free food, free,free,free. You owe them, don’t ya know!
Stop spending on social programs that are not part of the enumerated powers of fedgov, and illegals. Highways are national defense projects and were built under that premise.
Year after year they raised the gas tax in California to save the road system. Then they spent the money on pet projects. It’s the same old song: The government identifies the few services the public demands; then diverts the funding to fraud - waste - and abuse. Only to claim that they need to raise taxes to fund the Roads; Schools; Police; or Fire Dept. All the while their yearly budgets and Bloated Bureaucracy grows.
No one has mentioned that the primary purpose of the interstate highway system when built was national defense.
Provide more oversight of the competitive bid process for highway repair.
Ensure those highways NEED repair and that it isn’t a vote buying scheme.
The whole premise behind diversion of fuel taxes is to get people out of automobiles and onto other modes of travel, because of the overall cost of highways. However, in study after study, the cost in people miles traveled, of alternative transportation systems is much higher than in the passenger automobile. While trains do carry a lot of passengers, the cost per passenger mile far exceeds that of the personal automobile. Elitists dont like buses, but putting people on buses is much less expensive per passenger mile than putting them on trains. And those bicycle lanes. Their cost per passenger mile is exorbitant, and their riders don’t contribute a cent in fuel taxes! The automobile driver pays for all of these through fuel taxes! They’re the geese who lay the golden eggs, through state and federal, and sometimes local fuel taxes. And if the fuel taxes weren’t being robbed, the roads could be better maintained and upgraded.
Just rode Amtrak north to Vermont from NY city- the coaches are nice, but the tracks and signal stops are so bad that the train almost derailed twice and almost hit a truck coz the stop bar electronics was stuck.
-With all the Billions of Dollars $$$ You would think they would at least install NEW TRACKS!
Where is all the tax dollars going- they must all be corrupt Amtrak crooks if the tracks are not even safe.PS we were going 30 mph all the way and were always late.
Deport the illegals and there will be less traffic and less wear and tear on our roads and other infrastructures.