PING.
found two-thirds of state fuel taxes failed to keep up with inflation.
It doesn’t have to be a “long-term solution.”
It only has to be a solution to winning the next election for the incumbent party.
The main reason for inadequate transportation funding is not lack of revenue. Actually, far too many dollars are spent on projects unrelated to roads, such as rail, bike paths, and museums.
Moreover, gasoline taxes are regressive ...
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Gas taxes are really a user fee. They are ONE way of ensuring that the actual users of a service pay for it, just like the users of UPS pay a price for uding that service. They are no more regressive than the single price a user of UPS pays. (Should we charge the rich man a higher price for, say, food, than the poor man?) If there are some people who need to use the roads even though they can’t pay for gas, the government can give then gasoline credit cards.
1. “Gasoline taxes are an unreliable funding source for state transportation projects, road construction, and maintenance due to declining gasoline prices and more fuel-efficient vehicles.”
B.S. The intent of the user fees known as fuel taxes is to obtain from the road users a certain revenue based on road usage, and fuel usage is used as an average stand-in for road usage. It is accepted that due to differences in miles per gallon it overstates road usage for some and understates it for others, but all fees based on averages do that. There is nothing inherently bad or not “Conservative” about such user fees or how they are arranged. The problem is then NOT the fees, but the fact that they have not been adjusted for what has been happening with average fuel consumption per mile driven. Higher fuel efficiency means the same fee, on a cents per gallon basis, is not collecting as much fuel tax per average mile driven as it did before.
It would not be against Conservative principles to adjust fuel taxes based on improvements in fuel efficiency. Doing so would not change the average fuel tax paid for the average driver. What has been happening is the average driver is paying less annually in fuel taxes - nationally, in general, due to greater fuel efficiency requiring less fuel consumption - on average. The fuel taxes can be fixed to adjust them for greater average fuel consumption - when there is in fact greater average fuel consumption.
2.”Moreover, gasoline taxes are regressive and produce widespread economic consequences. Increasing fuel taxes leads to higher prices on goods and services throughout the economy. These additional costs are inevitably passed on to consumers, with an especially negative impact on lower- and middle-income families.”
MORE B.S. Any replacement of the fuel tax will simply change the means by which people and the economy will have revenue for roads extracted from them, not that they will no longer be financing the roads through some mechanism that extracts that cost from them.
3. “The main reason for inadequate transportation funding is not lack of revenue. Actually, far too many dollars are spent on projects unrelated to roads, such as rail, bike paths, and museums. “
The hypocrites then admit it is NOT inadequate funding or lack of revenue that is the problem (if true then why blame the fuel tax in the 1st place) but how dollars collected from fuel taxes are spent (on what??) and how much waste and corruption is involved when they are spent on roads.
After raising the false old bugaboo about fuel taxes they go on to make some sensible policy proposals.
Roads and Schools are the cash cows for liberals to extort money form the public to fill their pockets and pet projects.
The author lost me in the intro. Gas taxes, to my understanding, are not percentages. They are specific costs per gallon.
Therefore, the assertion that declining gas prices affect the government cut are seriously fouled up.
I wonder if private highways for the long haul truckers would be an idea worth discussing. It would be interesting to see how a such a highway system, built and paid for by the trucking companies and others who would use it, would likely that better run and maintained than the government’s roads.
Not a dime is being for funding transportation.
It is for the fat gov’t pensions that we peons pay for them.