Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991                   TAG: 9102040287
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GASOLINE IS CHEAP, SO RAISE THE GAS TAX

The case for raising the gas tax ought to be compelling, now that the hazards of dependence on foreign oil are so apparent in the Persian Gulf.

But someone has to make the case. Someone like President Bush. If he wanted, he could go on national TV and ask this question:

Fellow Americans, don't you wish gas were as cheap as it was in the 1950s, those good old days, long before OPEC and oil shocks and Gulf wars?

Americans might be surprised to learn they'd be wishing for higher prices. Adjusted for inflation, and even with the price jumps since Iraq invaded Kuwait, gasoline now costs about 30 cents less than it did in 1950.

That's absurd, also dangerous. As long as the price of gasoline doesn't reflect its costs to society, America can't undertake an effective conservation program. Right now, the price doesn't come anywhere near the cost.

The price includes the cost of exploring for oil and getting, refining and distributing the gasoline. But it doesn't cover the health-care, cleanup and other costs of car-generated air pollution. It doesn't cover the costs of traffic congestion, including highway maintenance and construction and lost time.

Nor, as the war amply demonstrates, does it begin to cover the costs of protecting an insecure oil supply - much of it concentrated in the world's most unstable region.

The best way to bring price into conformity with cost is to raise the federal gas tax. Last fall's budget agreement between Congress and the president included a nickel-a-gallon increase. But that was too small a step in the right direction. America continues to have the lowest taxation as a percentage of gas prices in the industrialized world. Japan's and Germany's are much higher.

A 50-cent increase in the gas tax would carry a host of benefits, mostly by encouraging conservation:

Experience shows that gas prices affect demand. During the 1970s and early 1980s, when prices were high, demand declined. America's gross national product increased by nearly a third between 1973 and 1985, yet energy use remained constant. That means we became more energy-efficient. We can do so again.

A higher gas tax would improve national security by reducing dependence on foreign oil (accounting now for about half U.S. petroleum consumption). It also would reduce America's trade deficit, a good portion of which results from oil imports.

It would spur more rapid development of fuel-efficient cars and alternatively fueled vehicles, such as electric automobiles.

It would reduce by billions of tons over years the carbon dioxide that cars emit into the atmosphere. The savings in reduced medical costs alone are incalculable. Also reduced would be the "greenhouse effect," which contributes to global warming.

A 50-cent increase in the gas tax would bring an estimated $40 billion annually into the federal treasury, helping to reduce the budget deficit and fund the Gulf war.

Americans need to pay more at the gas pump. They need the president to explain why.