http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...05,print.story


Newsday.com
AP Interview: Transportation secretary says taxing how much we drive may replace gasoline tax
By JOAN LOWY

Associated Press Writer

12:54 PM EST, February 20, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn — an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled," the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said.

Most transportation experts see a vehicle miles traveled tax as a long-term solution, but Congress is being urged to move in that direction now by funding pilot projects.

The idea also is gaining ground in several states. Governors in Idaho and Rhode Island are talking about such programs, and a North Carolina panel suggested in December the state start charging motorists a quarter-cent for every mile as a substitute for the gas tax.

A tentative plan in Massachusetts to use GPS chips in vehicles to charge motorists by the mile has drawn complaints from drivers who say it's an Orwellian intrusion by government into the lives of citizens. Other motorists say it eliminates an incentive to drive more fuel-efficient cars since gas guzzlers will be taxed at the same rate as fuel sippers.

Besides a VMT tax, more tolls for highways and bridges and more government partnerships with business to finance transportation projects are other funding options, LaHood, one of two Republicans in President Barack Obama's Cabinet, said in the interview Thursday.

"What I see this administration doing is this — thinking outside the box on how we fund our infrastructure in America," he said.

LaHood said he firmly opposes raising the federal gasoline tax in the current recession.

The program that funds the federal share of highway projects is part of a surface transportation law that expires Sept. 30. Last fall, Congress made an emergency infusion of $8 billion to make up for a shortfall between gas tax revenues and the amount of money promised to states for their projects. The gap between money raised by the gas tax and the cost of maintaining the nation's highway system and expanding it to accommodate population growth is forecast to continue to widen.

Among the reasons for the gap is a switch to more fuel-efficient cars and a decrease in driving that many transportation experts believe is related to the economic downturn. Electric cars and alternative-fuel vehicles that don't use gasoline are expected to start penetrating the market in greater numbers.

"One of the things I think everyone agrees with around reauthorization of the highway bill is that the highway trust fund is an antiquated system for funding our highways," LaHood said. "It did work to build the interstate system and it was very effective, there's no question about that. But the big question now is, We're into the 21st century and how are we going to take care of our infrastructure needs ... with a highway trust fund that had to be plussed up by $8 billion by Congress last year?"

A blue-ribbon national transportation commission is expected to release a report next week recommending a VMT.

The system would require all cars and trucks be equipped with global satellite positioning technology, a transponder, a clock and other equipment to record how many miles a vehicle was driven, whether it was driven on highways or secondary roads, and even whether it was driven during peak traffic periods or off-peak hours.

The device would tally how much tax motorists owed depending upon their road use. Motorists would pay the amount owed when it was downloaded, probably at gas stations at first, but an alternative eventually would be needed.

Rob Atkinson, chairman of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission, the agency that is developing future transportation funding options, said moving to a national VMT would take about a decade.

Privacy concerns are based more on perception than any actual risk, Atkinson said. The satellite information would be beamed one way to the car and driving information would be contained within the device on the car, with the amount of the tax due the only information that's downloaded, he said.

The devices also could be programmed to charge higher rates to vehicles that are heavier, like trucks that put more stress on roadways, Atkinson said.

 

Just stupid....

So, just raise the gas tax.

Exactly. Why do this with all of the concern of global warming?

That's fine, but adding a mileage tax would be the same thing!

Then increase the gas tax to make up for it. In turn, it encourages more people to switch to fuel efficient vehicles, which would require the gas tax to increase, more people switch, .... It helps us towards energy independence, unlike a mileage tax.

Wouldn't taxes have to go up even more to pay for the devices and infrastructure?

If it is downloaded at the gas pumps, then why not just keep the gas tax? How does this work for electric cars which is one of the reasons given for needing a mileage based system.

Uhh, larger vehicles use more fuel, so a gas tax incorporates this as well. How would the system know if you were hauling a heavy load, which puts even more stress on the roads. Those vehicles use more fuel, so a gas tax already handles that.

 

There is a certain amount of money that is absolutely needed to fund the things that we want and take for granted.

Fuel efficient new vehicles and hybrids that kick fuel economy over the 35 and 40 mpg mark means that a whole lot less gas will be used, and therefore a whoile lot less money coming in to pay for the things we want and take for granted (ie: decent roads and bridges that don't randomly fall into a river taking our families with it).

Raising the gas tax is all but dead.

What do you do?

There is always going to be some type of taxes.

Personally, I don't care what taxes are raised as long as income taxes aren't, or are dropped. The reason I feel that way is:

1. Income tax penalizes you for simply earning more. Yes, if you earn a gazillion per year, you should pay a hefty tax on it. But for the person whose putting bread on the table, and a roof over their head, I don't feel income tax is the way to do it.

2. Gas & sales taxes are taxes we can control personally. After paying $5 per gallon with the money going into the pockets of Mobil or Exxon and other countries like Venzsuela, I don't give a FF about paying an extra 50 cents or even a dollar per gallon in taxes on $2 gasoline to help our own country. We've already sent over 500 billion of our taxpayer dollars to set up a government in Iraq that is going to never be paid back, and will never do us a nickel's worh of good. Whatever waste argument anyone puts forward doesn't hold water against the complete waste of my money going over there.

3. The alternative is exactly what we've seen in recent years... and worse. Anyone who has spent time overseas, or even just in Canada recognizes that the US has roads that equal third world status. The Philippines have better long distance highway roads than us in many areas. The road from Tiajuana to Enseneda Mexico puts many of our own highways to shame. Don't even get me started about Australia or Canada's roads next to ours. Yet, the richest and most powerful nation in the world has roads and bridges that compare to places like India and China (the only other places that have records of main bridges simply falling in due to neglect.


Nobody... and I mean NOBODY likes taxes. This isn't simply a conservative issue, it's global.

The difference is that elsewhere, people aren't so stupid as to expect a free ride on everything, and realizes that things cost money. They make actual choices and honest decisions which we here in the US avoid by stating we're doing things on principle...... only problem is that principle doesn't repair anything, doesn't solve anything, and doesn't put food on the table.


This is the key reason why China OWNS the United States of America. Instead of actually realizing that things cost money, and that someone has got to pay for everything, we'd rather borrow money from China (and other countries) and.... pay attention.... PAY INTREST TO THESE COUNTRIES IN ADDITION TO THE MONEY WE BORROW instead of simply paying for these things ourselves without paying useless money (intrest) to someone else like a collective group of bloody idiots living in some fantasy world.

We ARE going to need the money... why are we paying China for the priviledge while pretending that we can just cut our way to health (which we obviously can not.... and will never be able to do) istead of simply paying for the stuff ourselves???

Gas taxes haven't risen in nearly 19 years. The cost of maintaing roads have not decreased those 19 years. With the years of neglect (due to budget constraints) some areas cost of repair is going to be astronomical.

During World War 2, the top tax rate went as high as 92%. The Kennedy Tax Cut in the early 60s cut top rates down from the 70% it had been at since the end of the war. The Reagan Tax cut dropped top rates from 60% down to the upper 30s.

Meanwhile, throughout this time, the income tax rate for the middle class has generally been between 15 and 20% on the Federal level.

All this happened as income generally rose over the years.

Today, not only is the United States overall personal tax rate the lowest of all industrialized countries, in constant dollars, it's generally at the one of the lowest levels in it's recent post WW2 history.

As long as Income Tax doesn't go up, other taxes will have to if we want to keep our country and our lifestyle.

We can control how much gas we use. We can control how much we buy. We can control how many miles we drive. Therefore, we have control over our tax rates in those areas. Being that you get deductions for work related travel, taxing mileage is perhaps one of the more fair taxes. I already pay a tax if I fly somewhere. High fuel prices already has toned down my road trips (and I guarantee you that I still nput on more miles on my car annually than 95% of anyone else here!), so I should be the first person in line to attack this tax proposal.

The thing is, that with the miles I drive, I notice how s*itty the roads here are next to other countries I drive in, and seeminly every 6 months I read about a bridge that closed down or fell in because there wasn't the money to repair it.


Sorry if this seems like a rant, but having spent time in other countries (including driving), seeing how their infrastructure is, and seeing how much they actually pay in taxes, then doing the same thing here is just simply disturbing.

We actually have it extremely good here in taxes.... and I mean extremely good.

Trouble is we're financing our future via China and we're letting everything go to crap, thinking we're on top all based on the concept of principle.

Mindless principle and a lack of shared sacrifice of any kind is what's going to cause the fall of this country..... and there won't need be a single shot fired by a foreign aggressor.

 

Along with the invasion of privacy reasons for NOT doing something so crazy, im curious if the auther mispoke or misquoted someone.
A quarter of a cent, 0.0025, per each mile
0.0025 x 30 miles = .075 or 7 and a half cents.

Less money than a 10 cent per gallon tax on fuel for a car that averages 30mpg. It would take a car that was getting 40mpg to get equal money to a 10cent gas tax.
I think the states gas tax average is currently 20something cents per gallon of gasoline.

Also, the cost in running such a system has to be pretty high. I dont really see how anyone could be supportive of that idea.
How about spending road repair dollars on roads and not to balance the budget in other areas!

 

Speaking of Big Brother, Charlie, I just read something about Daley wanting to have cameras on every street corner in Chi-town...

This taxing our mileage proposal had better be dead in the flocking water.

 

This mileage tax is the stupidest thing ever, for the reasons you stated above gas tax is better than the mileage.

To add another 7¢/gal. of tax will require very little man power to make the change and cost zero to collect the extra tax since the system is already in place. To enforce this mileage tax will cost Billions, require ungodly amounts of man power, and create countless legal problems.

 

Put that under the topic: "Revenue Generation".

 

I'd much rather pay a gas tax than a mileage tax for the privacy reason alone, how ever well intentioned the idea might be I see can guys like the insurance industry lobbying to have the info available to them.

 

So because there might be less wealth - we need to tax more.

Those are not the principals this country is founded on. How about spend less and reduce capital gains, payroll and income tax to stimulate the economy and.....wait for it.................TO CREATE WEALTH.

Those were a couple of things Reagan did in '81, when we had 11% unemployement, 21% home interest rates and substantial inflation. That started the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of mankind. I wish we had a guy like that now.


BTW, regarding taxes - the US has the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrial world.

 

 

Nobody likes paying taxes because most of their taxes don't usually go toward anything worthwhile. They don't want there money being dumped into two conflicts or have it handed to banks in order for them to loan it back to us with interest. The DoD lost $2.3 trillion 7 years ago and nobody seemed to care. That money would have coverd the first bailout of the banks, the bailouts of GM and Chrysler, and the stimulus package with a few billion left over for fixing infrastructure.

 

WHAT!?!?!

Where'd you hear that?

 

Nationally speaking, this ones dead in the water. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090220/...le_mileage_tax

 

Interesting that he's worried about funding for highway projects, even after a one trillion dollar, erm, "stimulus" package was just signed into law - which was advertised to be heavy on infrastructure funding.

 

Billions will be wasted on supporting this program and getting it installed. Aside from the lawsuits and privacy issues, you'll have people getting around it *somehow* and subverting the system. It is much harder to subvert tax at a pump.

Indeed, we have it good.

Cause the people dont want to pay for anything...

...when their money is spent on stupid pork barrel projects and plans that do nothing but waste money.

Hike the gas tax. It wont do anything. They'll simply waste MORE. Fix the people at the top instead of pumping more money into a sinking ship.

...Sounds just like GM Mgmt!