Death to the Federal Gas tax!

[4est_4est_Gump]

The notion that U.S. infrastructure is crumbling and underfunded has been common lately, and more such news came in February, when the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that the Federal Highway Trust Fund could soon run out. This spurred debate about what to do with the trust's main funding source, the federal gas tax. Some legislators have long wanted to raise this tax, and President Obama recently proposed his own $302 billion funding plan. But one Congressman, Georgia Republican Tom Graves, has a better idea: nearly abolish the gas tax altogether.

Last November, Graves introduced the Transportation Empowerment Act, which was cosponsored through Senate legislation by Republican Mike Lee. By drastically reducing the tax, it would enable states to manage their own transportation policies, improving a process that has become massively inefficient under federal oversight.

“It's rather silly,” Graves told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, that “taxpayers pay taxes at the pump that go to the federal government, [which] then tells our state how it must spend the money,” even though it doesn't “give you all the money you submitted.”

Currently, the $18.4 cents/gallon tax, along with an even higher diesel fuel tax, is the nation's prime source for transportation spending. Starting in 1956, the tax was funneled to the Highway Trust Fund to pay for the Interstate System, and has since funded numerous other projects. But with the rise of fuel-efficient automobiles, revenue from it has declined over the years from a high of $45 billion to somewhat more than $30 billion annually, and the fund is expected to have insufficient resources to meet all of its obligations within a year. Graves' bill would reduce the tax over five years to 3.7 cents/gallon, which could produce around $7 billion, and that money would be sent to states through block grants with few regulatory strings attached. States could then make up the difference by raising their own gas taxes.

Graves believes that this would produce more and better infrastructure, by allowing states to keep revenue that he correctly claims is not now being returned. According to a 2011 Heritage Foundation study, 28 states have a negative return on the gas taxes that they pay into the fund. Georgia, for example, is expected to have an 84 percent return in 2014—meaning a $185 million overall loss. Similar nine-figure losses are typical for Colorado, Michigan, and Texas, which has been robbed of one-fifth of its revenue since 1956.

How do such enormous sums get frittered away? Partly because of redistribution to other states. But it is also because of added costs imposed by what Graves calls the “Washington middleman.”

Scott Beyer, Reason.com

 

[Saint Peter]

Roads are for pussies!

 

[about_average]

Roads should be 100% funded, and only funded, from fuel taxes, also known as a user fee.
The real issue, as mentioned in the article, is more fuel efficient vehicles.
So the only two options are large increases in the fuel tax, or a tax based on vehicle weight/number of axles per miles driven. The tax should remain at the pump however, so where the roads are being used they are receiving some revenue.
The problem is that the way it would likely be implemented the powers that be would likely add in additional tracking of people. There's little incentive to track total mileage of a vehicle and leave it at that.

 

[RobDownSouth]

TAXES BAD!

Simmer down, FGB, I said 'Taxes' not 'Texas'

 

[Saint Peter]

Texas is for pussies!!

 

[snugglestruggle]

It's all about gathering and redistributing. Look at how many D.C. politicians are millionaires. There's no law preventing them from benefiting from insider trading resulting from their government jobs.

 

[bill-pix-trade]

From this web site:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/10/24/the-gas-tax-doesnt-work-because-politicians-broke-it/

"There’s a real irony in raiding general revenues to keep the trust fund solvent — the gas tax’s problems started when Congress raided the trust fund to keep the government solvent. In 1990 Congress approved an increase in the gas tax but allotted only half of the new revenue to building projects. The other half was dedicated to deficit reduction – which then, as now, was all the rage. In 1993 Congress approved another gas tax hike and again devoted some of the revenue to deficit reduction."

In 1997 Congress redirected all gas tax revenues to the Highway Trust Fund, and the levy returned to its former role as a user fee. But the damage was done."

 

[mark_j]

What is really funny is that these people act as if this is something new. It's been going on for many years. We always hear about how this fee/tax or that fee is being raised to "pay for roads". While in reality those extra fees or taxes only have a small percentage actually going to such projects.

The rest gets dumped into the general fund and has nothing to do with "transportation projects".

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Roads should be 100% funded, and only funded, from fuel taxes, also known as a user fee.
The real issue, as mentioned in the article, is more fuel efficient vehicles.
So the only two options are large increases in the fuel tax, or a tax based on vehicle weight/number of axles per miles driven. The tax should remain at the pump however, so where the roads are being used they are receiving some revenue.
The problem is that the way it would likely be implemented the powers that be would likely add in additional tracking of people. There's little incentive to track total mileage of a vehicle and leave it at that.

Uhhhhh....

How do you tax electric cars?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

What is really funny is that these people act as if this is something new. It's been going on for many years. We always hear about how this fee/tax or that fee is being raised to "pay for roads". While in reality those extra fees or taxes only have a small percentage actually going to such projects.

The rest gets dumped into the general fund and has nothing to do with "transportation projects".

No, it is not acting as if it is something new, but part of a continuing national dialog on the efficacy of centralized bureaucracy....

 

[miles]

Uhhhhh....

How do you tax electric cars?

By the amount of filthy coal it takes to generate the electricity to charge the car.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

By the amount of filthy coal it takes to generate the electricity to charge the car.

We're gonna bankrupt coal...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

This is what your tax dollars produce:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/03/22/sinkhole-of-bureaucracy/



!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

“Every time we would do what I would call a stress test, we would come up with abysmal numbers — like an 18 percent success rate,” said Robert Danbeck, who was overseeing the project. The root of the problem, he said, was that the system had trouble synthesizing information from so many sources and calculations based on so many laws. “We would go back and look at what caused it, and it was always just so many pieces, trying to tie things together.”

Danbeck quit. In early 2008, the system went live.

Then it broke and was eventually scrapped, after more than $106 million had been spent. In the mine, the files continued to move on paper.

Contained in all those failures, experts say, is a very brief history of the federal government’s recent troubles with information technology.

A recent study by the Standish Group, a firm in Boston that researches failures, found that only 5 percent of large federal IT projects in the last decade fully succeeded.

Of the rest, 41 percent were failures, canceled before they were turned on. The reasons often echoed the problems in the mine: Federal officials either tried to buy a technology they didn’t fully understand because they lacked the technical skill, or they didn’t test what they were getting until it was too late.

This echoes exactly what I was taught in undergrad Software Engineering.

If you want to get paid for not producing, pitch and win a government contract. Hello. ACA anyone???

 

[about_average]

Uhhhhh....

How do you tax electric cars?

...a tax based on vehicle weight/number of axles per miles driven.

Obviously electric cars couldn't be taxed at the pump, so that could be part of the yearly registration fees, with random verifications (with very heavy fines if people lied about the mileage) so people would be less likely to lie about their mileage

 

[RobDownSouth]

This echoes exactly what I was taught in undergrad Software Engineering.

If you want to get paid for not producing, pitch and win a government contract. Hello. ACA anyone???

Let me guess here, Chief. You're a legacy COBOL programmer, aren't you?

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Uhhhhh....

How do you tax electric cars?

How do you tax gas powered cars?

 

[Ishmael]

Roads should be 100% funded, and only funded, from fuel taxes, also known as a user fee.
The real issue, as mentioned in the article, is more fuel efficient vehicles.
So the only two options are large increases in the fuel tax, or a tax based on vehicle weight/number of axles per miles driven. The tax should remain at the pump however, so where the roads are being used they are receiving some revenue.
The problem is that the way it would likely be implemented the powers that be would likely add in additional tracking of people. There's little incentive to track total mileage of a vehicle and leave it at that.

From this web site:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/10/24/the-gas-tax-doesnt-work-because-politicians-broke-it/

"There’s a real irony in raiding general revenues to keep the trust fund solvent — the gas tax’s problems started when Congress raided the trust fund to keep the government solvent. In 1990 Congress approved an increase in the gas tax but allotted only half of the new revenue to building projects. The other half was dedicated to deficit reduction – which then, as now, was all the rage. In 1993 Congress approved another gas tax hike and again devoted some of the revenue to deficit reduction."

In 1997 Congress redirected all gas tax revenues to the Highway Trust Fund, and the levy returned to its former role as a user fee. But the damage was done."

What is really funny is that these people act as if this is something new. It's been going on for many years. We always hear about how this fee/tax or that fee is being raised to "pay for roads". While in reality those extra fees or taxes only have a small percentage actually going to such projects.

The rest gets dumped into the general fund and has nothing to do with "transportation projects".

Bunch of good points made here. I'll add another tidbit to the discussion and that is the nature of politicians.

While the discussion is always directed towards the 'crumbling infrastructure', the fact is that a great deal what funds are made available are NOT used to repair the infrastructure, rather those funds are used for new, and often unnecessary, projects. If a politician votes to allocate funds for repair there is little chance that they'll have their name attached to it. But building the new "Sen. Horatio Porkbelly Memorial Bridge" is just the ticket to immortalize ones self. So rather than vote to repair the infrastructure we have they vote to create more infrastructure, as often as not unneeded, to satisfy their own ego. Infrastructure that will crumble in it's own time and require repair that won't be done.

It's often been quipped that Sen. Bobby Byrds' only regret on his death bed was that he had not lived long enough to entirely pave over the entire state of West Virginia.

Ishmael

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

Roads are for pussies!

hahah

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Bunch of good points made here. I'll add another tidbit to the discussion and that is the nature of politicians.

While the discussion is always directed towards the 'crumbling infrastructure', the fact is that a great deal what funds are made available are NOT used to repair the infrastructure, rather those funds are used for new, and often unnecessary, projects. If a politician votes to allocate funds for repair there is little chance that they'll have their name attached to it. But building the new "Sen. Horatio Porkbelly Memorial Bridge" is just the ticket to immortalize ones self. So rather than vote to repair the infrastructure we have they vote to create more infrastructure, as often as not unneeded, to satisfy their own ego. Infrastructure that will crumble in it's own time and require repair that won't be done.

It's often been quipped that Sen. Bobby Byrds' only regret on his death bed was that he had not lived long enough to entirely pave over the entire state of West Virginia.

Ishmael

Sounds like the voters need to step in and hold their reps accountable.

 

[phrodeau]

Uhhhhh....

How do you tax electric cars?

How do you tax gas powered cars?

Electricity is already taxed in most states.

It's biodiesel that isn't taxed yet.

 

[about_average]

Electricity is already taxed in most states.

Problem is, there's no way to associate those taxes with road use.

Thinking about it, they could do away with the taxes at the pump entirely and base it 100% on registration, with a very heavy fine if you're caught lying based on random verifications.
The downside of that might be how even it would be for states. For instance, if I live in Oregon and drive down to Baja, California wouldn't get any revenue from me for roads, whereas with taxes collected at the pump they'd get quite a bit.

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Problem is, there's no way to associate those taxes with road use.

Thinking about it, they could do away with the taxes at the pump entirely and base it 100% on registration, with a very heavy fine if you're caught lying based on random verifications.
The downside of that might be how even it would be for states. For instance, if I live in Oregon and drive down to Baja, California wouldn't get any revenue from me for roads, whereas with taxes collected at the pump they'd get quite a bit.

You'd need to hire inspectors who checked peoples' odometers, and if I understand you correctly you would need them for the state & federal level.

What's stopping some people from saying I drove 1,000 of those miles in Canada for a summer trip?

 

[phrodeau]

Problem is, there's no way to associate those taxes with road use.

Thinking about it, they could do away with the taxes at the pump entirely and base it 100% on registration, with a very heavy fine if you're caught lying based on random verifications.
The downside of that might be how even it would be for states. For instance, if I live in Oregon and drive down to Baja, California wouldn't get any revenue from me for roads, whereas with taxes collected at the pump they'd get quite a bit.

It makes more sense to tax tires.

 

[dan_c00000]

This echoes exactly what I was taught in undergrad Software Engineering.

If you want to get paid for not producing, pitch and win a government contract. Hello. ACA anyone???

Parts of coding the ACA websites -like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan- were outsourced to private companies.

Of course since Bush II did both of those things it never actually happened, right?