Free Republic

Amid a deepening stalemate over financing highways and public transit, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf on March 12 proposed phasing out his state's gasoline tax, the second highest in the nation, and appointed a commission to recommend alternative ways to pay for the state's needs. Wolf ordered a panel of several dozen lawmakers, transportation industry representatives, transportation planners, government officials and others to deliver recommendations by Aug. 1 of funding alternatives to foot the extra billions of dollars deemed to be necessary. "Our economy, our communities and our future rely on a strong transportation system that supports our safety and growth,"...

California has the second highest fuel costs in the nation, with gas prices only rising in recent years. A committee working on behalf of the California Energy Commission discovered an “unexplained surcharge” in September 2017 costing Californians over $17 billion since February 2015, or $1,700 for a family of four. Now, nearly a year and a half later, lawmakers are taking notice. Nineteen Democrats sent a letter to Attorney General Xavier Becerra earlier this week asking him to lead an investigation. “There is a surcharge that began showing up between refineries and our gas tanks in the distribution and retailing...

This feels like something from a William Gibson cyberpunk dystopia novel, where the government has become so weak and useless, private corporations have been taking over the basic upkeep of the nation. But it’s not a William Gibson novel, there’s no plucky protagonist with some sort of cybernetic implant, it’s just America in 2018, with crumbling roads that Domino’s has decided to fix. For the sake of the pizzas. Domino’s is tired of their innocent pizzas, who only wish to serve humankind, being beaten all to hell by poorly-maintained roads. They even have a website that shows, in graphic, pizza-box-cam...

A Republican congressman says the U.S. government should significantly raise the gas tax in order to fund President Donald Trump's ambitious infrastructure plan. Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania told Bloomberg TV that the tax should be increased by 15 cents per gallon of gasoline. The current rate is 18.4 cents, and hasn't seen a hike since 1993. Shuster said Thursday at a Republican congressional retreat in West Virginia that for the average American, a 15-cent increase would equal the cost of 'a cup of coffee a week that they might have to forgo.' 'Or if you're a Starbucks person, half...

Yesterday we showed something strange: while oil prices have rebounded from multi-year recent lows, gasoline prices have not only rebounded but have done so with a vengeance, sending retail gasoline at the pump is now back to levels last seen just over a year ago, even as WTI (and Brent) is materially lower. As we concluded, "gas prices are unchanged while oil prices are 25% lower." Something did not add up, which prompted some readers to inquire if this was purely a function of higher gasoline taxes.  We don't know the answer, and assume it is a deep secret of America's...

He's BAAAAACK! A NEW "shared payment":Obama to propose $10 per barrel fee on oil CNBC ^ | 2/4/2016 | Jacob Pramukhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3392911/postsObama proposing $10 a barrel tax on oil to pay for transportation programs MarketWatch ^ | 02/04/16 | Robert Schroeder http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3392925/posts

It's all happening so fast, it's hard to keep up with all the b.s. coming out of the president and his White House in his last year. In case you missed it, Obama just proposed raising the gas tax to what would amount to 136%. By proposing a $10 per barrel tax on every barrel of oil produced in the U.S., Obama wants to add a 25 cent gas tax on every gallon of gas you purchase at the pump. He wants to use it to pay for his green transportation initiatives. Considering federal gas tax is 18.4 cents...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says an EU-wide tax on petrol could help finance refugees and strengthen the bloc's borders. His comments come after sexual assaults by foreigners in Cologne caused uproar. "I've said if the funds in the national budgets and the European budget are insufficient, then let us agree to set up, for instance, a tax on a certain amount on each liter of gasoline," Schaeuble told the "Sueddeustche Zeitung" daily. "We have to secure Schengen's external borders now. The solution to these problems must not founder due to a limitation of funds," he added. Schaeuble went on to...

Germany's finance minister on Saturday floated the idea of a European tax on gasoline to help finance the continent's efforts to manage the migrant crisis. *snip* "If the funds in national budgets and the European budget aren't enough, then let's agree, for example, to raise a levy on every liter of gasoline at a certain level," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung

In last week’s post about ExxonMobil’s 2013 earnings, I noted that we earned about 5.5 cents for every gallon of gasoline and other petroleum products we refined, shipped, and sold in the United States. Consider this: The federal and state and local governments collected 40 to 60 cents per gallon in taxes. The American Petroleum Institute just updated their map showing the combined local, state and federal tax rate in each state as of Jan. 1, when new taxes took effect.

The Texas Legislature’s point man [Drew Darby] on transportation funding says Texas motorists need to understand that a higher gas tax would be a more 'open and transparent' way of dealing head on with the state's transportation crisis than the 'congestion tax' that motorists are currently paying every day. "I think we need to revert to pay as your go," State Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) told the San Antonio Mobility Coalition."Nine times members of the Legislature have raised the gasoline tax to pay for our transportation infrastructure, but that hasn't happened since 1991. Lawmakers over the past several years...

HARRISBURG - More than $2 billion will soon begin to flow into road and bridge repair and mass-transit improvements after the state House gave final approval Thursday to the long-awaited transportation bill. The House sent the bill - the first comprehensive transportation-funding legislation in 15 years - to Gov. Corbett late in the day with a 113-85 bipartisan vote. With it, Corbett notched a major legislative victory. He said it represented a "new era in resurgent and reenergized Pennsylvania." "This bold transportation plan demonstrates that our elected officials are serious about keeping our residents safe and our economy strong," he...

WASHINGTON -- The federal interstate highway system is showing its age, and, faced with the cost of repairing all those bumps and cracks, some states want to ask motorists to pay tolls on roads that used to be free. When the interstate system was created in 1956, a federal per-gallon gasoline tax was enacted to provide a stream of revenue for the Highway Trust Fund. The federal government paid 90 percent of the construction costs, with the states making up the rest. That model worked for decades, but no longer. Americans are driving less because of the economy and higher...

Nothing shows off the worst of Congress like a highway bill. And this year's scramble for cash is worse than ever because the 18.4¢ a gallon gasoline tax will raise $70 billion less than the $263 billion Congress wants to spend over the next five years. Let the mayhem ensue. The Senate has passed a two-year $109 billion bill sponsored by Barbara Boxer of California that bails out the highway trust fund with general revenues, including some $12 billion for such nonessentials as the National Endowment for the Oceans and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The bill requires little...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley may be more skilled at implementing President Obama’s agenda than the White House itself. The Democratic governor is bringing the same big-spending, high-tax and class-warfare policies to the Free State. It’s going to cost residents a bundle. Tough economic times have forced ordinary Americans to cut back in order to get by. Not so Mr. O’Malley, who spends $35.9 billion in the budget released last month. That’s up from $34.2 billion last year and $32 billion the year before that. As Maryland Business for Responsive Government points out, the general fund budget fattened 11.4 percent last...

As Ben Domenech notes in his Transom, Mitt Romney’s advisors have now advised him to support “a $2 gas tax, a VAT, and open Taliban talks.” Add to that list not repealing Obamacare. Norm Coleman, an advisor to Romney, went on record saying We’re not going to do repeal. You’re not going to repeal Obamacare… It’s not a total repeal… You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president… You can’t whole-cloth throw it out.

In normal times, renewing the federal excise tax on gasoline would be another routine vote in Congress. But as the past month of rancorous and intensely partisan debate about raising the debt ceiling has shown, the times are anything but normal. And with most of the 18.4-cent tax per gallon of gasoline set to expire Sept. 30, renewing the tax could be the next political controversy to spark a brawl in an ever more deeply divided Capitol Hill.... One transportation advocate who works on the issue told POLITICO that the relevant congressional committees barely seem aware the issue is pending...

Interesting map, showing what each state charges in taxes for gasoline, per gallon....

Did you enjoy the gridlock last week? Summer traffic trying to reach the beach can lead to some pretty hairy back-ups. Pretty soon, you'll be able to pay even more for the privilege of sitting in traffic. The O'Malley administration is socializing a plan to hike the gas tax between 42 percent and 100 percent, and raise the round-trip tolls on the Harbor Tunnel, Key Bridge and Bay Bridge to $8 - regressive taxes on hard-working Maryland families. There have been news stories about crumbling infrastructure, an empty Trust Fund and the need to pay bond holders. This PR campaign...

Imagine if the government taxed you for food, then gave you the money back for groceries and told you what you had to buy, and where you could buy it. That's what the government is doing to states with transportation spending, and the new 112th Congress should restore sanity by returning fuel taxation and highway spending to the states. Congress levies taxes of 18 cents for gasoline and 24 cents for diesel, puts the revenue into the Highway Trust Fund, then returns it to the states to spend on transportation. States in the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, the Rocky Mountains,...