Click to enlarge - combined local, state and metformin weight loss side effects federal taxes per gallon
Steven Crowder has a funny video out, and Ed Morrissey on Hot Air was gracious enough to post it up on the Hot Air site.
I agree with Steven on this – the Federal 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax is about to expire. This provides, on average, about 32 billion a year in revenue which then gets turned around to the states to allow for roads and infrastructure to be built or rebuilt.
I’d like to posit a theory:
What if the tax isn’t renewed? What if, let’s say, we decide to take out a layer of fat and remove the Federal government from the equation?
What?
Why?
Let’s look at two simple reasons: Waste and cost reduction.
Right now, the Federal government, in a similar manner to the Department of Education, is wasting money by bringing in funds from state taxpayers that could be taxed by the state at a lesser rate by the states and still get more revenue for the states to do the same road work.
How?
Because you remove the costs associated with the Federal bureaucracy and allow the states to only have their costs take away from the infrastructure funds. Say the Federal government only costs 30% off of the funds brought in – that would leave the states with an additional 9 billion split amongst themselves to do roadwork. This would mean more immediate capital to be spent by the state governments on targeted projects that would likely take less time from start to finish without much of the Federal bidding paperwork to slow things down. The average would be about
180 million per state in additional funds, though that would differ according to population and things like interstates coming through and tourism and such. California would get a much larger windfall than Rhode Island, obviously.
That would hire a lot of people and create new projects like crazy, wouldn’t it? And this is on top of the taxes the states already charge people per gallon.
On top of that – there is the second reason that Mr. Crowder brings up – and that is that the states would be able to spend these funds without having to comply with the Federal union standards on projects – which would mean that the cost of actually doing the road projects would decrease in states that aren’t driven by union shops.
So you could actually reduce the taxes per gallon of gasoline, have more money more immediately available, have less costs on the back end due to lower spending on contractual costs and the taxpayers could actually see a slight lessening in the cost per gallon of gasoline.
Some benefits? Lower costs due to lower transportation costs resulting in more spending by consumers which can result in more jobs.
How about more travel which results in more tourism, more products sold to people coming to tourist areas, more money moving and more revenue to local, state AND Federal governments?
Not too shabby, eh? 5-7 cents less per gallon is a big deal when you’re running a fleet of trucks or looking at a staycation versus a vacation.
Why won’t this happen?
Because the Federal elites in D.C., much like the Dept. of Education, believe that they know best, the engineers and DOT workers in the states aren’t as smart and the people in the state governments wouldn’t do the right thing by the Democrats main donor group by feeding unions more money at the cost of the other 90% of the taxpaying public.
Charging 10 – 12 cents per gallon in each state would allow for a slight price drop from the 18.4 cents per gallon, while giving the states the same or more money and more control over the expenditure of those funds to help the people of their states.
What a benefit to ALL taxpayers.
And need I remind you, anyone who has a car or pays for anything that is transported (groceries for example) IS a taxpayer.
Check out Steven Crowder’s video here
