Greybeard999

"Government makes more money on a gallon of gas than the oil companies do; what is government doing with all that money?"

Around here they put up a "bump" sign so I can't sue them for a new rim if I hit the pothole that's about as big as my car......

Old Lar

What always happens when one of the buckets of money gets full (gas tax revenue), the bureacrats find a need to spend the money in that bucket for things other than what the money was intended for, so they need to find new ways to fill that bucket. The gas tax revenue generated was supposed to be used for infastructre maintenance. That money got spent elsewhere. No tax is ever reduced, but another tax is created to generate more revenue and when they don't generate enough revenue, the government borrows it and that is why the US is in the financial mess we are in.

Black2010 1LT

Old Lar - You're preachin' to the choir!

If they can find a place to waste it, they're going to find another way to get more!

Doc brown

You're right, the press would never twist anything to make us think the way they want us to think.

Go back and read both the Hill articles, and the one I linked to. Note that the Hill article references the undated draft. Then second article quotes House Transportation Chairman John Mica from a 2009 interview. Interestingly, the second article was posted only a few hours after the first and quoted White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki: "This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not take into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.” Early draft, never circulated within the administration, no dates mentioned. The link I posted tells about the idea over 2 years ago (Feb 2009), and has similar wording.

In other words, the Hill articles are very craftily written to make us think they are current news. The draft was very likely written back then, and went no where, only to recently resurface as "news".

843de

Not that concerned about it, when you live in a state where you pay property tax on your vehicles, Uncle Sam trying to get a piece of the action is kind of expected.

RedwoodPerch

This type of law would actually hurt the Gov't more than it would help them. If they decided to tax us by the mile then we would drive less and use less gasoline. Since gasoline is also taxed, then the Gov't would get less revenue from less consumption. And when consumption goes down then the price of gasoline would also go down. The only way to compensate less consumption is to make our vehicles less efficient, i.e. longer red lights. That's the reason why our Gov't won't synchronize city traffic lights. If they did, they would lose alot of revenue.

That's why I thought that those congressional hearings about improving fuel economy was an absolute joke. Who are they to mandate the auto industry to improve gas mileages by 10% when synchronising traffic lights would improve mileages at least by 30% or more?