I repeat again. We are running out of federal highway funds. In America. Here. In America. What the hell have these people done to our country?
The federal highway trust fund will run out of money this month, requiring delays in payments to states for transportation construction projects, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said Friday.
The trust fund — a federal account used to help pay for highway and bridge projects — will run about $8.3 billion short by the end of September, Peters said during a conference call with reporters.
The shortfall will mean short delays — and in some cases a temporary reduction — in payments to states for infrastructure projects the federal government has agreed to help finance.
“I don’t acknowledge other states exist”-secessionist Sarah Palin
And McCain called out Obama on the raising of gas taxes which funds this work.
Gas prices go up ( as democrats & environmentalists want), people drive less and spend less on gasoline, so tax revenues shrink.
Damn funny how that works.
Obama should propose a new $1.00/gal federal tax on gasoline on top of the federal & state taxes we already pay.
Well, it’s also that the gas tax is fixed, rather than proportional.
So as price goes up, gallons bought goes down and revenue collected goes down.
[...] Because the federal highway trust fund is out of money. [...]
United States Constitution, Article I, Section 7:
Further, from Oliver’s article:
Peters blamed the funding shortage on the high price of gasoline, which has prompted Americans to drive less. This means less fuel has been purchased, and less gasoline taxes collected for the trust fund. Americans drove 50 billion fewer miles between November and June 2008 than during the same period a year earlier.
Compounding the problem, Peters said, is federal lawmakers’ habit of loading up highway spending bills with pet projects, or earmarks, for their home states. The current highway spending bill has more than $24 billion in earmarks, she said.
One presidential candidate has averaged $1 million in earmarks for every day they’ve been in the Senate — about three quarters of a billion dollars.
The other presidential candidate has not only not only refused to ask for a single earmark, but has denounced them for years and has vowed to fight them from the White House.
Here’s a hint: one Senator specifically requested a $1 million earmark for his wife’s employer — who had, coincidentally I’m sure, given said wife a 160% raise shortly after her husband was first elected to the Senate in 2004.
Thanks for the link to the story, Oliver. It made it quite vivid just who represents more of the same, and who just might be able to fix these problems.
I don’t think that it was the one you intended, but thanks nonetheless.
J.
My apologies. That raise said senator’s wife received was a 120% raise, not 160%. And if anyone needs a hint, that raise did NOT come from a beer distributorship.
J.