The Extreme Measures Republicans Will Take to Avoid Raising Taxes

By the time you read this, Congressional Republicans will have overwhelmingly voted to violate one of their most cherished guiding principles: A service should be paid for by those who use the service. If we don’t fully pay for services, Republicans usually insist, markets can’t work effectively. We undervalue and overuse services, resulting in wasteful overspending.

All of which makes the debate about renewing and replenishing the months-long federal highway trust fund so revealing. This spring Republicans made clear their position: No new taxes. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), speaking for himself and his party declared, “I do not support, and the House will not support, billions of dollars in higher taxes to pay for more spending” on transportation.

Camp’s position might be reasonable if he and his fellow Republicans were at the same time willing to abide by another of their basic principles: Live within your budget. If you don’t have the money, don’t spend it. In this instance, if drivers are unwilling to pay the road budget then cut federal highway spending by 28 percent, which would reduce overall national road spending by about 7 percent.

But Republicans don’t want to cut road expenditures. They just don’t want drivers to pay. The result has been months devising strategies to divert money from other sources. In May, in a memo to rank and file House Speaker John Beohner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted they had come up with a perfect “way to ensure continued funding of highway projects in a fiscally responsible manner.” They would make up the highway-financing gap by eliminating Saturday postal delivery! To ensure that the roads are adequate for delivering the mail they will no longer deliver the mail.