Your highway dollars at rest

Commuting is weird when you think about it. Five mornings a week, we all spend one to two hours trying to keep each other from getting to work.

Yet Congress still has not been able to pass an updated transportation bill. All it could do was pass a 60-day extension.

Even though during the debate everybody seemed fed up.

Some Congress members note that passenger trains and oil trains have recently come off the tracks, and others liken budget proposals to fixing roads and bridges with Silly Putty.

It’s so bad, even normally conservative business people are lobbying Congress for a tax increase.

But nobody seems to agree on how to get it.

Well, I know climate change has created some pretty extreme weather, but I wouldn’t bank on that. And so Representative Peter DeFazio is asking for what would be the first increase in the federal gas tax in 22 years – an increase of 1.7 cents a gallon.

“The American people would sure as heck rather pay another 1.7 cents than another nickel in the coffers of OPEC, or Exon Mobil or Wall Street speculators,” DeFazio said. “It’s time to suck it up around here.”

But wait, won’t members get voted out if they pass a tax increase?

“Nobody is going to lose their election over 1.7 cents a gallon. In fact, people will thank you at home,” DeFazio said.

But most polls shows that ordinary Americans are uninterested.

The commute would have to come to a perpetual stop for Americans to rise up and demand a tax increase. And at that point, it wouldn’t even be a tax. It would be rent.