Raise the Gas Tax-Now!
Just about everything George Bernard Shaw said, or, more correctly, wrote down on a piece of paper, was memorable, if not immortal. Consider that he observed that if all economists were laid end to end, they could not reach a conclusion. Someone else modified that wisdom to note that if all economists were laid end to end, they would point in all directions.</br></br>Can any of us disagree? Take, for example, what is being said about the proposed gasoline tax. Every guy who can correctly spell "John Maynard Keynes" is now on his soapbox, making totally contradictory pronouncements about the much-discussed possibility of a gasoline tax to reduce the federal deficit. A goodly number are saying that a 15-cent-a-gallon federal tax on gasoline (added to the present 9.1 cents) would knock about$15 billion off the debt in a reasonably painless way. Another group is saying that such a tax is inflationary and unfair to low- income groups and to drivers in western states who have to run longer distances for the necessities of life. Others are in concert with George Bush, simply moving their lips in a doctrinaire opposition to taxes of any kind.</br></br>So what should be done? Regardless of what the boys in the White House think, a whole lot of folks here inside the Beltway think a tax on gasoline is inevitable, but only if the Democrats in Congress can generate enough guts to pass such a levy and then stand the heat of the sure-to-come presidential veto. That means they get saddled with the mark of Cain as the ones who jacked up the taxes-to save the nation from financial ruin-over the dead bodies of the gallant Bushies. But so what? Is it possible that just once Congress could exhibit a little political courage in the name of the national good?</br></br>We need a higher tax on gasoline. We would need it even if the national debt were zero. We would need it even if we were $176 billion in the black. Why? Because national priorities transcend simple dollars. As in keeping this planet from turning into a gaseous little hothouse. We are fouling our atmosphere at a sinful rate, and something has to be done to reduce our irrational dependence on fossil fuels of all kinds. (Yes, we need revised taxes on all sorts of energy consumption, but that is a broader question that must be addressed as part of a comprehensive energy policy.)</br></br>Advocates for a simple gasoline tax increase include conservative economists like Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker as well as liberals like Felix Rohatyn and Lester Thurow. Opposing them are heavy-duty highway-user interests and such pressure groups as Fuel Users for Equitable Levies, or FUEL for short. They claim that truckers, commercial interests, low-wage earners and folks from states like Wyoming would be unduly penalized by the tax. (Wyoming tops the list of 16 states whose residents consume more than 500 gallons of gasoline per year.)