Why is the typical career politician’s knee-jerk response to an urgent problem always to propose a tax hike or more federal spending or both? Take the collapse of the Interstate-35W bridge in Minneapolis. Within hours of that tragedy, career politicians in Washington were talking of crash federal spending increases of at least $250 million for safety inspections on the estimated 75,000 bridges rated “structurally deficient.” A 5-cents per gallon federal gas tax hike would pay for the new spending, according to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn. Oberstar promises the tax increase would be “temporary.” The technical term for that is “permanent.”
Before the politicians start sticking us for more money for them to spend as they choose every time we have fill up at the gas station, however, there are some important facts that put Oberstar’s proposal in proper context. First, federal transportation spending is set every five years, with the 2005 transportation spending bill of $286 billion being the most recent. You may remember that bill because it included $225 million for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. There were more than 6,000 other earmarks in that measure, worth almost $25 billion, including 147 for Minnesota worth nearly $500 million. Second, the 2005 bill was passed amid warnings that the Highway Trust Fund, which is financed by the federal gas tax and is used to pay for road and bridge maintenance, was approaching bankruptcy. Despite those warnings, Congress has since added another 1,400 earmarks costing $2.2 billion to new transportation spending bills. You can view these earmarks on the Taxpayers for Common Sense Web site.
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These facts point to one conclusion: The system that is supposed to appropriate federal tax dollars first for high-priority needs like making sure bridges don’t collapse is instead spending billions on earmarks for low priority special interest projects like the Bridge to Nowhere. In other words, the system is broken. Oberstar’s proposal illustrates Washington’s Tax and Spend Correlative — the more a federal program fails, the more likely Congress will “fix it” by increasing spending or taxes or both. It’s the perfect con game as long as taxpayers think a federal program is the only way to solve a problem.
The obvious alternative to a gas tax hike is for Oberstar and his colleagues on both sides of the aisle in Congress to reallocate as much of that $25 billion in earmarks as is needed to fix America’s potholed interstates and bridges as soon as possible.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates the job will cost $9.4 billion over 10 years. Then, the spend-aholics in Congress should check into rehab for federal spending addiction.
