Q. May I question your position on multiple taxation? I have for a long time had a problem with the idea that I pay close to 27% of my wages in taxes and then another 5% to 11% to spend it, depending on the item. Examples are the gas taxes, phone service connectivity tax, etc.Best regards, Chris - Gahanna, OH
A. Yes, it's true that you're paying taxes on spending your money on those items. In addition it's estimated that we are also paying an additional 10% of our entire Gross Domestic Product, i.e., the value of all goods and services produced in the United States, on regulations.I agree with the assessment made by the Cato Institute in the Handbook for Congress that "the original rationale for the U.S. Department of Transportation was to build the interstate highway system. That was a legitimate federal function, since all U.S. citizens benefit from a coordinated network of
interstate highways. But the interstate highway system was completed 15 years ago. The vast majority of DOT funding is now spent on noninterstate highways, local roads, and urban transit systems. It makes no sense to collect the federal gasoline tax, send it to Washington, D.C., pass it through
a federal bureaucratic maze of 65,000 workers at DOT, and then send it back to the states where the funds originated."Cato goes on to say that "in transportation policy, the federal government has become a costly and meddlesome middleman. Until 1996 states were forced to comply with a federal 55 mile an hour speed limit in order to get back their gas tax revenues from Washington. It was the federal government that mandated air bags. Federal highway funds come with other strings attached that inflate
construction costs: the Davis-Bacon Act (requiring union wages on federal highway projects), minority set-aside programs, and buy-America provis-ions.
Those add about 30 percent to the cost of federal construction projects and thus contribute to the decay of America’s public infrastructure. Moreover, increasingly Congress uses the DOT budget as a pot of money to deliver pork-barrel projects that states would rarely fund if they were spending their taxpayers’ own money."Finally, "All of this inefficiency and redundancy could be ended by closing down the DOT and repealing the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. States could then raise the gas tax themselves (as much as they wished) to pay for whatever road building and repair were needed. Eliminating the cost
of the federal bureaucracy in Washington would cause construction and maintenance costs for highways, bridges, and transit systems to fall."Federal highway spending is federal pork barrelling at its worst and the Republicans and Democrats both participate in it.