ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, May 27, 1996 TAG: 9605290027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: HOLIDAY
BECAUSE THIS is a big weekend for driving, it seems appropriate to revisit the congressional drive - begun in response to a temporary spike in pump prices and in view of onrushing elections - to cut the gasoline tax. Indeed, the initiative is such a farce that anyone's repulsion bears repeating.
The 4.3 cents per gallon added to the gas tax in 1993 was a modest help in reducing the budget deficit. Now presidential candidate Bob Dole and the Republican-controlled Congress want to repeal that, and the Clinton administration is willing to go along in return for raising the minimum wage.
Such a vote-buying gimmick would be unseemly enough in itself. The offense is compounded by the sheer folly and cynicism of choosing this particular tax to lower.
Americans continue to pay less than half the price of what drivers in other industrialized nations are paying for an exhaustible commodity. Cutting the gas tax, among other things, encourages consumption, raises the trade deficit, ignores the natural tendency of market prices to fluctuate, and increases America's dependence on oil from unstable places such as the Persian Gulf.
It adds to the difficulty and expense of achieving cleaner air, feeds the disastrous spread of suburban sprawl, discourages conservation and fuel-efficiency, and delays development of alternative energy sources and transit systems.
It requires taxpayers to subsidize yet more of the true costs of gas-guzzling (including health- and pollution-related expenses), accelerates the spread of greenhouse gases that are warming the earth, and swells the federal budget deficit along with the consequences that increased public debt and reduced public investment imply.
Did we leave anything out?
LENGTH: Short : 39 linesby CNB