Americans pay lots of taxes but never before have taxes been judged by
distances traveled. That could soon change.
The Obama Administration is floating a Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax as part
of the Transportation Opportunities Act.
Drivers in the United States pay auto purchase and leasing taxes.
There are already biting federal and state gasoline and fuel usage taxes.
Drivers pay bridge and tunnel and toll booth charges, and trailers and
truckers and recreational vehicles often pay additional fees.
And of course we are taxed every time we fill up or repair, or get service or
maintenance on our cars.
The plan being considered would create yet another new federal bureaucracy,
inside the Federal Highway Administration, called the Surface Transportation
Revenue Alternatives Office.
Big-Budgeted Big Brother will now monitor how many miles we drive through
electronic equipment on our cars.
We know why: They don’t like driving, and they want to change the way we
live.
The self-appointed elite wish to "transform" our society, limit our use of
energy, and fulfill their ambitious agenda of getting us out of our cars and
into big cities, big apartment buildings, and smaller lives and dreams.
The West will be particularly hard hit.
We don’t walk to the grocery store downstairs like they do in Manhattan.
In fact, the store is often miles away in rural America.
And in the big cities of Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada and the
small towns of Alaska, the Dakotas, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and New
Mexico, job creators will shy away from starting businesses for employees who
have to drive to work.
East coast elites have ganged up again. Our electoral college and the U.S.
Senate were meant to protect rural and less populist states. The tax wars
have now added another front.
Our tax battles are not new. Fair Tax, Flat Tax — ideas for reform abound.
And there is a growing movement in the land, the modern day Tea Party, which
stands for Taxed Enough Already? I think they just picked up some members out West.
Larry Greenfield is fellow in American studies at the Claremont Institute and
Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance.