Cascadia Journal

So we hear in the news that two of our three presidential candidates want to give us a “gas tax holiday” over the summer. They really are kidding, aren’t they? Here, I thought that Senator Clinton was really a serious candidate, too.

Sure, I would like to see our gasoline go down in price by 18 cents per gallon. Who wouldn’t, I suppose. We don’t really think that would happen now, do you? First of all, the cost of fuel is going up at such a fast rate that such a savings would be replaced by the oil companies in the form of higher prices within two weeks. Of course, everybody else is reporting something like that. Let me make a new suggestion. Let me present an idea that many have overlooked.

I currently pay 42 cents gas tax per gallon at the pump. That includes the 18.4 cents federal tax and 24 cents Oregon tax on that gas. People to the north in Washington pay 4 cents more than that. The point is that those fees are not too much different than when we were paying $1.20 per gallon for gasoline not too many years ago. As a percentage of the price, that 42 cents was around one-third of the price of gas. If we do get to a $4.00 gallon of gas, we will be paying only about 10% of the price of fuel in taxes. So we are paying a lot extra for gas, and the extra money goes to the oil companies to pay for the gas, but we are not putting away any more into our own taxpayer pockets to improve the roads and bridges that we rely on to get around.

So here we go. I hear a lot of complaining, but I don’t see a lot of action, about the price of gas going up from $2.00 to $3.00 to $4.00 and likely beyond. Sure, we don’t like it. I don’t see anyone caring enough to do anything about it, though. Besides, since total national fuel consumption has only gone down by about one percent so far, we are still a long way from the top of this roller coaster.

So my proposal goes like this: Lets all buy ourselves a gift. I want my gas tax to go up from 42 cents per gallon to 84 cents per gallon. No, I am not sadistic. I just presume that since we aren’t going to do anything anyway about the high price of gas, we might as well get something out of it and double our budget for roads, bridges, ferries, transit, and whatever other infrastructure those funds are dedicated toward.

Sure, this might be a step toward encouraging us to lower our fuel consumption. It would also improve our economy, since we will need to hire for more construction jobs and maintenance workers and bus drivers. We doubled our budget for those things, remember? Yes, I know that some of the road budget comes from other places, and that fuel consumption will decrease after while, and that there some other reasons the amount will not actually double. It will, however, clearly be enough so that some of the extra money we are spending will flow right back into our own pockets in the form of increased infrastructure for our own benefit.

I wouldn’t even have a problem exempting commercial trucks from this additional tax, since the increase would just be passed back to us in the form of higher prices. Or, we could put that share into increasing rail and ship capacity, as a way to decrease demand for the fuel over the long term. Or, we simply need to investigate why the price of diesel is so much more than gasoline, despite that product needing less refining by the oil companies.

We can do it, or we can stand back and let the oil companies make their profits. The oil companies will come out just fine anyway. The only remaining question is whether we want something for ourselves to show for it. Paying a little more now will reap us many benefits in the long term.

Share via email