Myth: Proceeds from the federal gas tax are used to build and maintain the interstate highway system.



http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/17/the-facts-about-transportation

As stated elsewhere in the article, lots of general revenue from the federal government is spent on roads.

All government entities spend money on roads. That's why calculating the subsidy cars get is so difficult: You have to analyze the budgets of every federal, state and local government entity. You also have to agree on what constitutes a subsidy. What portion of the defense budget should you count, since almost all of it is devoted to insuring that oil flows freely?

The Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 (signed by Reagan) increased federal gas taxes to 9 cents with 1 cent being used for a mass transit account.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund

However, the buses also use the horrible roads that we have inherited from raygun's trickle down nonsense. So I know the infrastructure needs fixing. I just think that a raise in the amount that the rich and the corporations pay would help better than taxing the poor and workers.

to round up every upper middle class urban hipster who takes the subway to their nice trendy office job and smugly brags about their "car free diet" and savagely beat the shit out of them, then maybe. I have a jealous hatred of such people. We should all be so fortunate.

But as long as America Inc. decides to have a contracting/temp economy with multi-state work locations and builds suburban office parks further and further away, then many more workers will be driving their hybrids even longer multi-hour commutes and wishing even more violence upon smug hipsters who sip their tea in coffee shops on their laptops looking at cat videos.

to fix the roads.

the people pay it. or maybe that 1/10 of a cent that they collect. I've never paid 9/10 of a cent for anything, except gas.

We're close to peak price now and a barrel of oil is nowhere near peak price.

If I didn't know better, I'd think we were being gouged.

who get paid by the oil companies to pass legislation that favors them over the people.

Are Democrats this fucking evil that they would support this?

off in a corner and dies. It's bullshit.

To prevent our own party from fucking us over.

what amounts to a burden on the poor and working people.

how the rest of us contribute.

long distances to work. About the people who work two and three jobs who live way outside the
cities where the jobs are because they can't afford to live closer.

This would be a disaster for them.

Who need to drive to get to work but have a hard time scraping together money for gas so they can get to work. A tax like this hits them hard.

I'd like to see a plan to fix roads that doesn't fall so hard on the working poor.

Why do I get punished, and these big corporations get tax breaks and loopholes? Sorry but I can't back this. Nevermind that prices seem to go up for everything.

I can see this being an easy $20-$30 a month for someone like me who drives a lot to get to work. Maybe not a lot of money to some people but means a lot to me.

But when I was working, I used to feel like I was working to pay for the gas to go back and forth to work.