Motorists' habits spur call for tax increases

It seems to me that every single civilization throughout history has had to deal with this issue and that this means that a wide variety of already existing methods of tackling the problem have to already have been in use to varying degrees of success so....

Question: Why can't we look at those before trying to jump into some bizarre big brother-esque mess of an attempt that will actually add more red tape and therefore more cost? At the very least shouldn't it give us a couple of ideas?

Leave it to the government to use this kind of "tax" logic to further stiffle the well being of middle class Americans.  Now that oil prices have plummeted and gasoline is below $2.00 a gallon and we can breathe a little better economically, here comes "our" government with a plan to add a 50% tax to the gas prices for infrastructure.

Never mind OPEC screwing us when the job can be done by our own leaders.

If the U.S. government.......Congress, Senate , and House members would not take pay increases for four years, and roll that amount over into a road surface fund, it would probably pay for ALL the U.S. roads to be renovated.

All of us tax payers get nailed for the government GRAND IDEA's !

Increasing gas taxes during an economic slump is one of the many prescriptions for further "tanking" an already weak economy.  I believe one of the studies suggested for the states to raise its gas tax, in addition to the fed gas tax.

Just because roads/highways are public uses, it doesn't mean the government has to be responsible for the entire life cycle of the highway system.

In my opinion, the marketplace is an effective method for efficiently producing something with limited resources-- especially when there is a profit potential.  Instead of raising taxes, which obviously will bear a greater burden on low and middle income wage earners, why aren't we reading about proposals for public-private partnerships?

If roads were built better they wouldn't have to increase anything.  In this country we use a low grade asphalt.  It's called a mono bead type of asphalt.  In France they use a poly bead type of asphalt.  It's a much better type of asphalt and the roads last a lot longer.  Also, France makes the company installing the road responsible for the repairs.  That's why the roads are better.  If you and not the government, were held responsible for faulty workmanship ( like we have in this country ), wouldn't you do a better job?

I drive a diesel pickup. Not only do I pay more in fuel taxes, we also pay additional "fees" for registration due to the weight of my truck. My diesel is very fuel efficient, getting around 25mpg.My uncle drives a big rig for a living, for which he pays an additional $15,000 per year in addition to fuel taxes. I live in CA, these fees and taxes are supposed to pay for the upkeep the roads.

I do not think that we need more taxes and fees, the feds and state just need to be more efficient with our money. These "fees" were originally supposed to go into the transportation budget but now go into the general fund. If these taxes were only put towards what they were collected for, we would be able to maintain and build our transportation system.

And over my dead body are they putting a GPS in my truck.

$5.00 per galon again?

let the Exon pay for the highways instead of sponsiring CNN.

Unbelievable.  We bailout finance folks that got themselves into their own problem.

We bailout the banks that "had to lend" money at too low of interest rates on too high of a property value.

We (thank goodness) bail out the auto WORKERS, but we fight to "save tax dollars".

We spend a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) dollars on a war that the President lied us into.  (Not to mention 4200+ lives of American Youth, and many hundreds of thousands of other lives).

We have let the US infrastructure languish while we fund all kinds of stupid bridges to nowhere.

We have just had the most corrupt administration in history running the government.

And now you propose that the taxpayer (driver) alone shoulder the burden of fixing the roads, and you have the audacity to tell us that if you change the name of the Bill it might pass.  I suggest you name it the "Imprison all Politicians Act."  That will get my support without reading the Bill.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

And so the backdoor taxes of the Democrats begin. Happy New Year.

I know we have a representative style of government and not a true democracy, but our elected leaders are ignoring us, big time, when it come to taxes and raising them and associated fees.  They act like they have no power to stop the excess spending and reign in taxes, but its a smoke and mirrors game that is laughed about behind our back.  Liberals like Barney Frank and Chrissy Dodd keep poking the tax deals in our faces and "our" elected leaders follow them is a hypnotic trance.  I do not believe we will ever see true tax reform.  The money from taxation is too addictive.

The financing commission thinks the long-term solution is a mileage-based revenue system. While details have not been worked out, such a system would mean equipping every car and truck with a device that uses global positioning satellites and transponders to record how many miles the vehicle has been driven, the type of roads and time of day. Creation and installation of such a system would take about 10 years.

I would venture to say this is unconstitutional.

yup..here we go with the tax, tax, tax, .....trillions in bailouts and we just don't know where we will get the money for roads...let's call this tax something else...let's rape the taxpayer even more...obama needs money for his infrastruture job deal..hummmmm let's raise taxes...

So, government wants to know everywhere I go? When I was an impressionable sophomore in college somebody told me there are two real freedoms: the right to contradict yourself and the right to leave.

I have a 4wd truck so I really do not need "improved" roads to begin with. If fuel must be rationed according to some righteous system devised by high government green priests, then I wish they would just give me my 2,000 gallon allotment for the year and let me use it, swap it, or accumulate it for a really long trip if I wish to.

And who says Detroit doesn't build a vehicle that I want to buy? I lust with all my heart for a Duramax Chevy diesel in a Class C RV frame.  Of course I am one of those triple dipping baby boomers who has worked continuously and hard my whole life and now wants a few footloose years roving around North America before they sentence me to an assisted living nursing home or worse.

the fact that the gov. wants to know which roads I drive on is not my main concern..gas prices and their taxes are....esp. when we all know prices will not stay down and the gov. in the guise of taking care of us..LOL wants to double up the price....tell me who will be able to use those roads when gas is $8 or $10 a gal. no credit to buy those cars and the big 3 going under???

Hey Democrats....don't do it!  This is how you get voted out in 2010.  If you want to raise some taxes, do it on the upper class/rich only, like Obama said he would.  The vast majority of Americans don't care if you raise taxes on the rich.  But raise them on gasoline, you will piss off almost everyone!

Where are the dems when these reports come out, they hide from these posts. I just read one that NY was trying to pass a new tax to increase sugar drink tax to 18% and there was no dems commenting. I guess you want all of these state programs and more gov. but the means to pay for it you avoid commenting on. The gov. needs to cut back on their budget rather than taxing us more to pay for their inabilities and horrible accounting. Why not try to make our tax money go further and review and make changes to improve the financing. I guess when the dems want to be more like Europe this is what we get. We need to hold congress accountable for their out of control budget and their waste of our tax dollars. They collect trillions of dollars from Americans and still over spend and need more taxes.

WE spend like a gajillion more on defense... I'd think like ONE fighter jet could probably pay for all the highways in Los Angeles.

Seriously, if you look at how we spend our budget, you'd think it was Ozzy osbourne handling america's finances.

I agree all programs need to be reevaluated and decisions made on what to keep and what we are wasting billions on. Obama has said that is the plan. We'll see. He was also the one during the primaries that was less in favor of gas tax. You'd think under the current circumstances with the price of gas being about the only good news, it's gonna be like taking the dog's bone away. Plenty of persons are really struggling now and who ever backs this one is gonna get bit. I'd like to know where the windfall profits the oil companies made off everyone of us went during the last 5 years. I was under the impression some of this was going to get taxed substancially. Oh that's right, after the fall in the price, Congress moved on to more important unaccountability matters, like the banks crashing and needing your tax dollars so they could loan you money.

Stop worrying about "windfall" oil profits--that is just thinking like a very stupid communist. The oil businesses at their most profitable made about 15% on investment. Why should that be illegal or immoral? Fact is, making a profit when you can should be encouraged, not discouraged. More than that, if an oil company sells a gallon of gas when oil costs $140 per barrel to buy, the company has to figure that it is going to have to replace the oil it sold you at the higher per barrel price, so it has to charge more to buy the fuel itself that you will want in processed form next month. Price controls are never a good idea because they always force producers to cut back on production, which insures that prices will stay high in the long run. If I produce widgets and you claim that I am screwing you on the price (in essence, there is a "fair" price for widgets) what you are really saying is that I am your slave and I have to bust my butt to produce good widgets which you can force me to accept less than fair market value for!

Are you going to claim that "Big Oil" has you over a barrel because you can't possibly organize your life so that you don't consume so much gasoline?  You have plenty of alternatives available. If an oil company decides it wants to sell its gasoline for $15.00 per gallon, it has a perfect right to do so. If you want to vote for a politician who promises to steal the gasoline from the oil company and sell it to you for $.47 per gallon (like in Iran) you can do so, but you and the politician are basically thieves and soon you will be ordering every producer of anything at gunpoint to supply you with all of your wants--bread at 10 cents per loaf, beer at 99 cents per case, electricity basically for free, and the latest high-tech medicines for a tiny fraction of what it cost to develop them.

This shows you what the bottomfeeders that are in control have learned,nothing!!!Now that we have backed off using oil heres your reward,TAX the fools, they don't care,they have done nothing about anything we've done so far.Get the idea.they call it bait and switch or bait and tax.You can bet when fuel consumtion goes up they won't take the tax off.

Bend over folks this is only the begening.

"Motorists are driving less and buying less gasoline, which means fuel taxes aren't raising enough money to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs."

Since drivers are driving less, the cost to the road programs should be reduced due to reduced road wear. The money saved on the road programs should more than fund the bridge and transit programs.  

The longer you let things fall to crap, the more it will cost to fix. This is the result of poor maintenance and not keeping up with growing demands. What could've been minor repairs are now complete overhauls. It costs more, and sometimes human lives, to deal with a collapsed bridge then to maintain a bridge.

People complain about taxes because they don't consider the fact that they have to pay either way. Either pay taxes to repair the roads, or pay a mechanic to keep getting alignments, new tires and other various repairs.

If there was a train I could take to work, I'd take it. I live in a rural area because that's where I can afford to live, and then I commute 70 miles a day to work where they pay me enough to be able to afford where I live. It's not the way I'd design a county, but what do I know?

I have two problems with that proposal. #1) we've been bombarded with pleas to conserve gas, we have and are now driving less. Now that we are, our government now decides that we need to pay more taxes because we're not buying enough gas. Denver, Colorado did that exact same thing with their water, conserve, conserve, conserve. We did and water usage dropped. Then came a tax hike because we didn't use enough water, meaning less money. #2) installing transponders in every vehicle means Big Brother could then track every American, whether they're driving or not. When I go out, I don't want somebody knowing whether I went fishing or to a strip club. Both is my business and mine alone.

With the Obama administration comes a war on the Canadian oil shale industry. What is wrong with oil shale? Well, they are taking the oil shale (sometimes called tar sand) and turning it into gasoline for sale to the USA. We could do exactly the same thing with all our coal (we are the Saudi Arabia of coal) but to the radical greenies now running the U.S. government any fossil fuel is evil, evil, evil. Oil shale conversion leaves too much residue which just can't possibly be managed, and using coal leaves coal ash, is which another allegedly intractible problem, much like nuclear waste which will never become an insignificant problem, don't you know, because 10,000 years no one will know how to contain the very minor and localized leaks of remaining isotopes.

Why will no one know how to deal with such things?  Because the green dumbing down of America will have at last succeeded.

The data is in for 2008 in the USA at least. The year was on average 1.4 degrees F. cooler than 2007, which itself was down, as most years have been since 1998. The average temps in the USA are only .4 degree F. more than when the alleged greenhouse gas warming started in the early 20th century.

There is no plausible way to cover over this issue with distracting misinformation about how global warming really causes apparent global cooling because of some magic extreme weather effect. The world is cooling and it shouldn't be, if carbon increase really has all that much to do with things.  .  .