Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020332
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
RAISE THIS TAX
PRESIDENT Clinton's treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, has floated the idea of an energy tax to help lower the budget deficit and encourage conservation. May this idea float all the way to enactment.There is considerable room for debate as to the proper form of the tax. The simplest way would be to tax gasoline. Bentsen seems to be talking about something broader, an energy tax that would reach more deeply into Americans' consumption patterns.
Either form would be fine. Either would benefit the nation greatly. The point, for the young administration and new Congress, should be to get one or the other in place.
Every penny added to the federal gas tax would bring in an estimated $1 billion in revenues needed to reduce the federal deficit and to pay for the public investments Clinton wants and the nation needs. Encouraging people to conserve gasoline would carry all sorts of other advantages as well, from reducing air pollution and American reliance on oil imports, to stimulating alternative energy development and better land-use patterns.
Ex-presidents Ford and Carter support a hefty increase in the gas tax, as do environmentalists, Ross Perot, Paul Tsongas, the heads of Ford, GM and Chrysler, and a lot of people who know that other industrialized countries tax gasoline far more than we do as a matter of sound national policy.
France's gas tax is $2.80 per gallon. Japan's is $1.70; Italy's, $3.50. America can afford a 50-cent-higher gas tax, especially if allowances are made for its regressive impact on the poor.
A broad energy tax would affect gasoline, too, of course. But transportation absorbs only about a quarter of all energy used in this country. A broader tax would presumably encourage higher energy-efficiency in other sectors, such as residential and commercial real estate.
Its impact might also strike a rough balance among regions. Southerners use a lot of electricity for air conditioning. Northerners use a lot of fuel oil for heating. Westerners use up gasoline driving long distances.
The only fuel in short supply has been political courage. If the Clinton administration persists with a substantive energy tax, in whatever form, not only will the budget and economy and environment benefit. America's political culture, long suffering from "no new taxes" nonsense, will be better off as well.