Congress is once again threatening to not fund part of the basic federal government role – helping to maintain our interstate roads and bridges. Once again, it is all about that word “taxes”.
If you believe that our roads are an important benefit all citizens of the USA benefit from, keep reading
If you believe the federal government needs to provide some funding for those roads, keep reading.
If you don’t believe either of those statements, you can ignore this post.
For my mind, providing funding for road and bridge maintenance and construction is one of the top dozen roles of our federal government. Why do I say this? Every American benefits from a good infrastructure because we all use it directly or indirectly. Indirectly we benefit because most of the goods we consume traveling over those roads. The food we eat, the clothes we buy, the medicine we consume, and the people that serve us get to us through our roads. Direct benefit comes from most of us travel to work, church, vacation, and school over those roads. Whether you are a driver or not, you benefit greatly from our vast array of highways. Since we all benefit, and the roads are everywhere, this is an area where the federal government has a role.
The FEDERAL gas tax has not been increased since 1993 (Jurassic Park and Sleepless in Seattle were top movies; Bill Clinton was in his first year as President). The Highway Trust Fund, which depends on these federal gas tax revenues to maintain our roads, has seen its revenues fail to match its level of spending for 13 years straight. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, “one in nine of the nation’s bridges are rated as structurally deficient, while the average age of the nation’s 607,380 bridges is currently 42 years.” There aren’t many things that we still use that are 42 years old.
You can argue the facts if you wish. But for me common sense says that a failure to increase funding, even at the rate of inflation, means that the funding will fall behind costs over time. That is simple math (unless you can somehow argue that the cost for building and maintaining a road has gone down over time – statistics indicate that is not true).
But what does our Congress do? They refuse to debate the issue. Why? Many Congressmen have signed “no new taxes” pledges. They maintain they must stick to that pledge. Other Congressmen say we need a tax cut elsewhere before adding this increase. Others say by raising the tax, it gives the federal government leeway in spending more money on other programs which is bad. I won’t argue with any of them. But the fundamental questions remain the same. (1) Do you believe the federal government ought to provide some of the spending for roads and bridges? (2) Do you believe the reports that indicate our road infrastructure is old and crumbling (do you have your eyes open on the poor condition of our roads)?
Eventually action will need to be taken. What will happen is the states will impose taxes. Or they will charge tolls. Or we will have long waits on roads when lanes are closed for slow repairs of because the road is damaged. Or they will turn the roads over to private, for-profit companies that will charge us a fee for using “their” roads. That is no different than a federal tax. It is money coming out of our pockets.
I have been searching for a metaphor for the (in)action of the Congress. I think it is similar to a parent saying, “I am not going to buy fast food for my child because it is bad for their health”. But then the parent does not provide any food in the house for the child. Since fast food is the cheapest and easiest food to procure, that is what the child will eat at lunch and dinner. So again, the parent can say they stuck to their “principles” but the outcome is still the same.
So our Congressmen (they are mostly men) will tell as at every chance that they made sure THEY did not tax us any additional amounts. We will shower them with our votes once again. Yet we will end paying for the roads either through taxes, tolls, long waits on messed up roads or damages to our cars caused by bad roads. That is your American Political Leadership in a short paragraph.
Dean Waggenspack 