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Remember that Beatles song about the taxman? “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street.” Well, that’s just about what the Transportation Secretary has proposed.

Bad ideas never die in Washington. They don’t even fade away. As proof, see the third effort in the last two years by the Obama Administration and members of Congress to tax us on every mile we drive. A larger issue is that the Administration ignores the core problem: using the federal highway program for wasteful spending projects.

The so-called vehicle miles tax (VMT) was first proposed by Obama’s Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood back in February of 2009.

A few months later, then-Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, James Oberstar (D–MN), backed the idea, too.

Of course, this is completely counter to the Administration’s push to get people in more fuel-efficient vehicles. A hybrid vehicle driving 20 miles would be taxed the same as an SUV driving 20 miles. The questions then become: Is a driver’s impact on highway infrastructure proportional to miles driven? Is vehicle weight a more appropriate measure? Should the government charge bicycles as well? Would this actually replace the federal and state gas taxes, or would it become an unnecessary additional revenue source for the government to fund transportation boondoggles such as Obama’s rejected high-speed rail and livability programs?

The priority for the Administration should be to fix the federal highway program. As Heritage Senior Research Fellow Ron Utt points out, motorists and truckers only get back about 65 percent on their user fees and taxes, with the rest being diverted to a growing collection of pet projects.

One clear example is the Livability Communities Demonstration Grant Program, in which Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood defines livability as: "…being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or post office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get in your car."

In other words, how can we use taxpayer dollars to get more people into buses, trolleys and trains? Eliminating wasteful spending from the federal highway program should be the Administration’s first priority, rather than finding different ways to tax Americans.

One wonders what’s next on the LaHood/Obama agenda. Taxing our feet?

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I remember years ago when Clinton proposed a BTU tax.  That would have killed poor folks in the South!  And this VMT tax will hurt folks who commute to and from work.  Folks are struggling to get by even now and have to pay insane gas prices (thanx to our President shutting down production).  And now he wants to add a tax to it???

I hope he never taxes toilet paper because ideas like these make me sick at my stomach.

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Originally Posted by Dennis Young:
I remember years ago when Clinton proposed a BTU tax.  That would have killed poor folks in the South!  And this VMT tax will hurt folks who commute to and from work.  Folks are struggling to get by even now and have to pay insane gas prices (thanx to our President shutting down production).  And now he wants to add a tax to it???

I hope he never taxes toilet paper because ideas like these make me sick at my stomach.

but reality can't get in the way of their ideology

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I was just thinking that when reading another thread.  Most politicians are rich (a poor man or woman could never get elected these days) and most have lived in cities all their lives.  They'd be lost in a small rural town.  So they have no idea what we have to go through and how their grand ideas really shaft those of us in small town america.

In my town, we are lucky to have a Wal-Mart.  There are no big supermarkets here.  There is no industry except for low paying sawmill jobs.  The glove factory closed down.  Health Tex shut down decades ago and thousands here lost jobs.  No restaurants to speak of except for a couple of small cafe's (meat and 3 veggies...country cooking, etc).   No recreation except little league and high school football.  I mean...its a small farming community!  And my town is like thousands around the country.  We have to commute to go to work in the cities nearby.

Many leave our communities in search of work.  Some of us are tied to this town for 1 reason or another.  (I have an elderly crippled mom to care for).  Anyway, taxing mileage for poor folks traveling to and from work 35-60 miles one way would kill us!  

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Yeah, thats a bad approach.  Most rural areas in California likewise lack public transportation systems or other links to the larger metropolitan areas where most work, so they have no means of avoiding such a tax.  The commuters are already paying a fortune in gas (both my parents commute to work in Fresno, so they have to be paying over $1000/month on gas just to get to work).