ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, July 25, 1996 TAG: 9607250033
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
LET'S HOPE the inane effort in Congress to cut the federal gas tax has finally died a well-deserved death.
In May, the U.S. House approved a gas-tax rollback by a 3-1 margin. In the Senate, however, Majority Leader Trent Lott has lowered its priority on his legislative package - a sign, says the anti-deficit Concord Coalition, that common sense may yet prevail, consigning the bill to history's dustbin.
The coalition's heart is in the right place, but its "cautious optimism" is premature. Even if predictions of the bill's impending demise prove true, the damage will have been done. The election-year demagoguery - initiated by Bob Dole and congressional Republicans, but with the assent of President Clinton and more than a few congressional Democrats - has made it all the harder to engage what ought to be the issue: not whether to cut the gas tax, but how much to raise it.
Currently 18.3 cents per gallon, the tax would be cut to 14 cents through the rest of the year under the pending legislation. The fact that the year is now more than half over is cited by the coalition as one reason for the measure's declining prospects. It also, we might add, suggests the cynicism that has informed the politicians' gas-tax pandering.
The pandering was kicked off this spring after a "surge" in gas prices to $1.28 a gallon. Some surge.
It turned out to be as temporary as industry analysts said at the time it would be. That's because it was the supply-and-demand result mostly of a cold winter that had delayed refineries' seasonal adjustment from heating-oil to automobile-fuel production. It had nothing to do, of course, with the gas tax, which has stood at 18.3 cents since 1993.
In any event, the after-inflation price of gas at U.S. pumps continues to be low by historical standards, low relative to gas prices in other industrialized nations, and low compared to gasoline's full cost to society.
The last is possible because much of the true cost is borne by hidden subsidies. Others, including governments from general tax revenues, pick up much of the tab for building, maintaining and patrolling highways; for cleaning up gas-related air pollution; for suburban sprawl; for the national-security costs of relying on a product imported from unstable countries.
Driving the citizen-based Concord Coalition's admirable opposition to the proposed gas-tax rollback has been the prospective revenue loss, $2.9 billion, at a time when the higher priority should be budget-balancing. That's important. A higher gas tax would not only encourage development of alternative fuels; it would bring in revenues that could be used to reduce public debt and invest in America's future.
But even without the need to solidify federal finances in time to withstand looming Social Security and Medicare pressures, the reduction or elimination of the gasoline subsidy by doubling or tripling the federal gas tax ought to be occupying Washington's attention.
And even if the political babble about cutting that tax goes nowhere in the end, it still will have rendered the dubious achievement of diverting the country from the real task at hand.
LENGTH: Medium: 61 linesby CNB