Lets Increase the Gas Tax

As our economy is deep within a recession, with millions of people jobless, our government is wondering how they are going to pay for the ongoing projects and our countries enormous debt. Many ideals have been proposed over the course of a year, but the one I would like to focus on is “The Gas Tax.” The United States Department of Transportation has proposed a mileage gas tax which many find it to be crossing the line of our liberty and personal freedoms. Our national government wants more tax payer’s money. My thoughts are that they evaluate their yearly pay raise and cycle that income elsewhere.

In general, the gas tax is revenue for the Transportation Department to continue to make improvements on highways and roads to accommodate a growing population. According to the Transportation Department, at the end of the fiscal year 2009, our country will be lacking billions of dollars for those projects. Currently, state gasoline tax is anywhere between 8 cent/gallon to 38 cent/gallon. This does not include the 18.4 cent/gallon tax that the federal government has imposed before state taxes. For example, Texas gas tax is 20 cent/gallon plus the federal gas tax of 18.4 cent/gallon equals 38.4 cent/gallon of gas. If all 519,576 valid driver license holders owed one car and fills up with 1 gallon of gasoline, it would be $197,438.88 total revenue for 1 gallon of gas (state receives $103,915.2 and federal receives $95,601.984); based off of 2008 Valid Licensed Drivers Data. Now, if you can just imagine that all licensed drivers and commercial licensed drivers all filled up their vehicles on one given day of the week, we would be talking about $3 billion per year, according to Texas Net Revenue by Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts. If this data doesn’t blow your mind, than I seriously think we have a problem. Each state collects a gas tax as well as the federal government, explicitly for Transportation. Our government is collecting more than enough money for transportation and recently the Department of Transportation received $26 billion from the stimulus package.

The Transportation Department is proposing a GPS tracking device to tally up the number of miles a vehicle is driven and charging that driver a set price per mile. That sounds real great right? Think again! We are talking about a GPS tracking device that is tracking your every move. If you have any knowledge of the bible, this would be called “the mark of the beast;” 666. The government is gaining too much control over us and our liberties are slowly being taken away. Beyond the literary aspect, having to pay per mile doesn’t sound like a good idea since they are proposing the idea to increase more revenue. If you haven’t looked at your cell phone bill lately, look closely, there’s a government tax for accessing the interstate.

Since the mileage gas tax will take nearly 10 years to come up with a full scale innovation release plan, to place a GPS system in every vehicle tracking how many miles you drive, congress is proposing a 5 year federal gas tax increase. The plan is to increase federal gas tax 5 to 8 cents a year until it reaches 40 cents a gallon. That means that your grocery bill will increase along with this tax. So we are all going to be hurting.

Transportation taxes can be subdued if congress would stop giving themselves a pay raise every term. Since congress is being paid by our tax dollars and our economy is in recession, how about they cut their pay, not just freeze their pay until 2010? That extra money can be rerouted back into the economy and to the Department of Transportation, if they truly do need it. What happened to the ideal of “for the greater common good?” Right now it seems there is some wasteful spending going on and our check and balance system isn’t keeping the checks and balances even.

2008 Valid Licensed Drivers Data
Texas Net Revenue by Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
House Freezes Pay Raise for 2010
2004 Congress Pay Raise
Transportation Chief Considers Taxing Miles Driven
Tax Rates by State