Comments on: Highway Trust Fund: Send $$$

By: AD - RtR/OS!

AD - RtR/OS! — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:27:09 +0000

Every state that requires periodic inspection, and/or smog testing, already has the means to check the mileage covered by licensed vehicles, since that data must be included on the inspection report.
They already have the data, they just don’t have the political cover to use it, YET!

By: JD

JD — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:52:53 +0000

chuckR – Why do you just assume that raising taxes is the appropriate way to do things?

By: chuckR

chuckR — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:46:07 +0000

We have always accepted that highways are built/maintained with user fees – the various gas taxes. There is no need to go to an intrusive GPS system that will have its own infrastructure costs and one federal plus 50 state oversight agencies staffed by people who perform no useful service. Let’s not even think about the spoofing that could occur to avoid or minimize the GPS mileage tax. Instead, keep the gas tax as an access fee. Additionally, read the vehicle odometer and calculate a sliding scale tax based on vehicle weight, not engine displacement or size of vehicle. Why? Roadways wear out two ways. One is weathering – covered by the gas tax/access fee. The other is cumulative damage caused by the weight of the vehicles on the roadway. This damage is highly non-linear with weight – varies by weight to the 4th power. A five axle 25 ton truck doesn’t do 12.5 times the damage of a two axle 2 ton car. It does 1500 times the damage. Trucks will be hit by this and for the liberals, so will SUVs. A 3 tonner will pay 6x the rate of a 2 ton car. And you can pick up the appropriate fee owed by electrics, if they ever happen in any significant numbers. And because the truck owners will pass along the tax, non-car owning urban dwellers will also pay their fair share for the privilege of having the necessities of life delivered by road vehicles.

By: jwarner

jwarner — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:10:52 +0000

What’s the problem? Just print more money.

By: furious

furious — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:04:43 +0000

"That would require equipping cars and trucks with devices that use GPS technology to record not only how many miles the vehicle was driven, but whether the driving took place on interstate highways or secondary roads and whether it was during peak travel periods. The device would calculate the amount of tax owed and the bill could be downloaded.”

Great, just great. SKYNET will be able to pick us off one by one rather than risk EMP damage from a set-up nuclear exchange. But, seriously, this is just plain creepy. Why in the world would some DoT bureaucrat need to know why I took US281 instead of IH35 to San Antonio?

By: HatlessHessian

HatlessHessian — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:07:29 +0000

Diesel is already taxed more. It’s much more of a green fuel, originating from waste from the refinery process and also giving the same weight vehicles much greater MPG efficiency.

So tax the crap out of it to make people drive horribly inefficient ethanol E-85 vehicles? Oh right… it’s worse than that. They’re taxing the crap out of diesel and subsidizing E-85 by charging less than the regular tax!

You couldn’t expect worse from a government that was intentionally trying to sabotage things.

By: C. S. P. Schofield

C. S. P. Schofield — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:52:08 +0000

Patterico; please in future put quotation marks around “trust fund”, since of course there is no such thing. I understand that there is a Supreme Court ruling in back of it, but whatever the reason, the gasoline tax money is spent as it comes in, and if there aren’t any problem highways it is spent on horse trails or whatever “transportation related” pork the thieves in Washington can come up with.

The problem isn’t to little tax money. The problem is too much for too long; the Political Class believes that the spigot will never get shut off.

By: imdw

imdw — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:04:48 +0000

“Their top recommendation was to tax motorists based on how many miles they drive. That would require equipping cars and trucks with devices that use GPS technology to record not only how many miles the vehicle was driven, but whether the driving took place on interstate highways or secondary roads and whether it was during peak travel periods.”

Taxing gas is better than taxing miles because it encourages efficiency. But taxing miles driven doesn’t need GPS. Just odometers.

By: Patricia

Patricia — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:41:28 +0000

Insanity!

Even if Obama were impeached and removed tomorrow, wouldn’t it be too late to reverse his disastrous course? How do you stop the biggest high speed train in the world when it’s lost its brakes?

By: cubanbob

cubanbob — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:38:40 +0000

Republicans need to hand the RINO’s their ass in the primaries. Better a real Democrat win the general that a RINO. Enough real ones with a backbone can jam Obama and the Communists in their tracks. No one wants a lite version of a Democrat, either full strength or out the door but nobody wants a weaker beer version.