Thursday, September 26, 2013

So who do you think should pay for the roads?


One way or the other we all do. And after not raising the federal highway gas tax for 20 years, the monies raised are inadequate to the point of disappearing.
The federal highway trust fund will run out of money by 2015, which will have a “devastating impact” in states that rely heavily on federal funds for their road maintenance and construction needs, transportation officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

To preserve the fund, road builders and engineers, state transportation officials and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pleading with Congress to raise the federal gasoline tax for the first time in 20 years.

Transportation funding had brought Democrats and Republicans together in the past, but the parties are now deeply divided over fiscal policy, including increases to taxes that fund infrastructure.

If Congress doesn’t act, some warned, states will feel the pain.

“We have to act,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The country is counting on us.”

The fund typically supports about $40 billion a year in spending on highway and transit programs nationwide. But the Congressional Budget Office projects that in 2015, the tank will be empty.

“We are facing an epic crisis,” Greg Cohen, president and CEO of the American Highway Users Alliance, told the Senate committee.
But it involves raising a tax and the Norquist Anarchists have gotten every imbecile Republican to sign a no new tax pledge that they believe absolves them from doing what they were elected to do. As if it would make any difference. Previous shortfalls in tax collections have been made up from general revenues so we all pay one way or the other.

// posted by montag @ 1:00 PM
Comments:
Norquist anarchists are willing to literally destroy America (without roads, our car-centric culture is going to have a hard time continuing to exist) in order to further their nihilist agenda. Amazing. Just amazing.

# posted by Blogger BadTux : 12:07 AM
 

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