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No More Money for Highways.

Jimmie | January 3, 2009 | Comments (0)

I read this delightful story at All American Pundit. Seems there’s a Congressional panel that wants to jack up Federal gas taxes 10 cents on gasoline and 12-15 cents on diesel fuel. They want to do this until they can find yet another way to make us pay to drive on public roads.

Here’s my question: why do we need even more money to pay for highway construction?

Let me name all the ways that you already pay for roads in this country.

An 18.4 cent gas tax and a 24.4 cent diesel fuel tax, per gallon. You also pay for that diesel tax when the trucking companies pass it along in higher prices for the goods they transport.
A $286.4 billion highway bill that was passed in 2005. The bill lasts six years. If the Federal government were to divide that money up equally, it would equal almost a billion dollars to each state, each year.
State and local gas taxes. The combined state, local, and federal tax on gasoline right now is 48.4 cents per gallon. Diesel is even higher.
State highway bills. For instance, Maryland’s six-year Consolidated Transportation Bill, proposed in early 2008, clocked in at around $10.6 billion dollars. That’s $1.76 billion per year.
Toll roads.

And Congress is looking to take more money out of your pockets? What is happening to the billions upon billions of dollars that your governments have already taken from you? Well, if you go back and take a look at the stories I’ve linked, the answer is obvious. Pork. Greed. Waste. Huge bureaucracies.

Yeah, seems to me that this Congressional panel can go pound sand. If they want to find money to improve our highways, they can go back and review the billions we’ve already given them. Until they do, we shouldn’t give them a penny more.