I have to agree with Westover on this one. Suspending the gas tax is just nuts and wrong-headed in a couple different ways. This is beautific:
“There has been too much grandstanding with politicians holding press events at gas stations and pointing fingers, but not offering any real solutions to the high cost of gas prices,†said Mark Kennedy. “I’m proposing the Summer Relief for Motorist Act to move beyond the partisanship, beyond the politics and beyond the finger-pointing. I’ve proposed a real solution that would immediately lower prices at the pump 18.4 cents per gallon.â€
Thank goodness Mark Kennedy has moved beyond the politics to push for a completely short-sighted proposal designed to put him on the good side of the voters. As Westy says:
So to solve a problem caused by too little supply for too much demand, the GOP is proposing a solution that would increase demand.
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I don’t know if Westover would agree with me that a gas tax increase would actually be good policy, but it doesn’t matter because no candidate who proposes a gas tax increase will get elected. I can imagine the campaign ad), cue threatening music, “Candidate X wants to raise taxes on hard-working middleclass people like you. Tell Candidate X to say no to higher gas taxes.”
From what I’ve gathered (and I’m by no means an expert on the subject), Minnesota is in dire need of infrastructure upgrades. The usual source of funding for such work is bonds, which have to be repaid. Without a way to repay the bonds, the state government can’t seek them out. Thus, since there is no way to pay for the needed infrastructure upgrade bonds, the plans to rebuild stuff goes no where.
The DFL has, at several different points, proposed a modest gas tax increase to pay for road repairs. At every turn it’s been shot down under the exact argument that MEG described - “Big Government liberals want to raise the taxes on downtrodden working people.” Sure, that sounds ominous, but they never mention what the money would pay for. Same old bullsh*t.
Last week I’d heard that W was requesting the authority to raise the CAFE standards on automobiles, forcing them to either make more efficient vehicles or change their product mix. Those proposals have been floated by Dems (and some in the GOP) for years as a way to decrease the stranglehold of foreign oil. The automakers generally lobby hard to defeat such measures, and they certainly haven’t been popular with our oil-friendly Executive Branch. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of that now. I read a statistic a week or so ago that showed a tremendous drop in oil imports if we’d increase CAFE by like 2 or 3 MPG.
I’m guessing there are two arguments for a gas tax increase going on here. One to fund more public works, a liberal progressive idea. One to decrease demand. And of course, if one thinks demand will be decreased, then the tax would not be 100% efficient toward adding money to the public works coffers.