ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605170045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
HOW MUCH, if at all, will Bob Dole's resignation from the Senate reduce election-year jockeying on Capitol Hill? Probably not much. One yardstick will be how quickly, if at all, Congress jettisons the idiotic notion of lowering the federal gasoline tax.
The move, inspired by an apparently temporary market-related rise in gas prices and by Republican political calculations, was to repeal the 4.3-cents-per-gallon surtax adopted in 1993 as part of President Clinton's deficit-reduction package. That brought the total federal gas tax to 18.3 cents per gallon.
The deficit has, indeed, been reduced. But it has not been reduced by nearly enough, in part because the gas tax was not jacked up by nearly enough. A tax on the order of 50 cents to 75 cents per gallon would still keep U.S. gas prices relatively low compared to the rest of the world. It would also not only help the anti-deficit fight, but would come a lot closer to recouping the public costs of America's gas-guzzling habits.
Even if the federal budget were in perfect balance and Social Security's and Medicare's future were the picture of actuarial health, the federal gas tax would be far too low. That's because it covers only a fraction of the costs that gasoline consumption imposes on the nation. The result is not only an unfair burden on general taxpayers but also a government-induced skew that undermines marketplace efficiency.
Gas-tax revenues, state and local, pay via trust funds for construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure (whose frequently poor condition is another argument for a gas-tax boost).
But not nearly enough gas-tax dollars go into general government budgets to cover the costs of abating and cleaning up gasoline-induced pollution, past and present.
Or to plan for and mitigate the consequences of gasoline-fueled residential and commercial sprawl.
Or to meet the foreign-policy and defense costs of maintaining access to overseas oil in unstable countries.
Or to pay for servicing that portion of public debt derived from previous spending on gasoline-related costs.
The result is a government subsidy of the worst kind: By hiding the true cost of gasoline consumption, the too-low gas tax rewards economically inefficient behavior and retards the development of alternative, less expensive technologies and solutions.
Politicians' castigating the deficit in one breath and calling for tax reduction in the next makes for a curious spectacle. When the tax to be cut is the gas tax, curious spectacle gives way to theater of the absurd.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB