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Monday, January 21, 2008
Washington approach to Georgia roads way off mark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The pork-barrel Congress that gave us a five-year $286 billion highway bill flush with 6,371 earmarks should be trusted with three times as much money — in excess of $250 billion a year for the next 50 years — say members of a national transportation study commission.
The current federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, which comes on top of Georgia taxes on gasoline that average 15.2 cents per gallon, should be raised by 40 cents per gallon over the next five years and indexed to inflation, the commission recommended to Congress.
No thanks.
Better still, try this: Reduce the federal gas tax to a penny or two or, better still, eliminate it altogether. Give responsibility and taxing capacity to the states, ridding us of the obligation to send money to Washington in hopes that a bit of it will come back. When it does, it returns to fund transportation priorities that may not align with Georgia’s.
And it returns earmarked for projects like the $87 million allocated to the 26-mile commuter rail line from Atlanta to Lovejoy, or $3 million for clean-fuel buses for MARTA when U.S. Reps. Jack Kingston of Savannah and John Lewis of Atlanta requested $300,000.
And in the midst of a war and a tanking economy, members of the Congress of the United States are convening to decide whether safety improvements costing $500,000 should be made on Glenwood Road in DeKalb County, as requested by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson. They did, thereby transferring to Washington a problem that should have been solved at the county level or, absent that, at the state level.
Not surprisingly all nine members of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission appointed by Congress are in agreement that federal gas taxes should be raised by 5 to 8 cents a gallon every year for five years. And they support higher state gasoline taxes, too. To be fair, the nine also urged Congress to do away with earmarks.
More interesting than the call for new gas taxes, however, is the minority report issued by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and two others appointed by the administration, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary and Rick Geddes, a Cornell professor who served as senior staff economist on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers.
“Raising gas taxes won’t improve congestion,” said Secretary Peters. “It will only perpetuate our ineffective reliance on fossil-based fuels to fund infrastructure and send more of Americans’ hard-earned money to Washington to be squandered on earmarks and special-interest programs.”
The “failure to properly align supply and demand, not a failure to generate sufficient tax revenues, is the essential policy failure,” she and others said in the minority report.
Tyler Duvall, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, noted that “Atlanta is one of the worst congested cities in the country … demand is too high given current supply in rush hours … and the peak is spreading. You don’t have a supply problem at 2 in the morning. As with any good commodity, you get over-consumption at some times of the day.”
Adding capacity and time-of-day pricing are part of the solutions, the three say. The private-sector capital is there, too — toll roads — and with different policies and regulations, can be part of the solution. Duvall said that “yes, we do need to spend more money … but the model will produce meager results if we don’t do anything different.” The fed’s role should be to focus on the national interstate highways and connecting cities, he said. Beyond that, it should encourage cost-benefit decision-making and innovation.
Nobody’s advocating eliminating the federal gas tax — though they should, and let states have the taxing capacity to solve their own congestion problems using taxes, the private sector and any road and transit pricing options residents want to try to ease congestion.
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No need to leave before Super Tuesday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For Democrats, there’s South Carolina. In Nevada, Barack Obama pulled 83 percent of black voters, who are about half the Democratic base in South Carolina. If Hillary wins there on Saturday, wow. Obama’s up about 10 points now.
For Republicans, there’s Florida. Polls taken last week give John McCain a slight edge over Rudy Giuliani, who competes seriously for the first time, followed by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee
Florida may begin to provide the clarity that’s been lacking — which, incidentally, is no cause for serious concern. Huckabee aside, the other candidates in the field with a chance of getting the nomination should be able to unite the base for the General Election, some more easily than others. McCain, for example, has not yet demonstrated that he can win without independents. Florida’s primary is a GOP-only affair. In New Hampshire and South Carolina, independents provided McCain’s margins.
Every week’s a fun week leading up to Super Tuesday when Republicans (delegates at stake) in Georgia (72), Alabama (48), Tennessee (55) and these other states are voting: Alaska (29), Arizona (53), Arkansas (34), California (173), Connecticut (30), Deleware (18), Illinois (70), Massachusetts (43), Minnesota (41), Missouri (58), New Jersey (52) New York (101), North Dakota (26), Oklahoma (42), and Utah (36).
No reason for Fred Thompson or anybody else to drop out prior to Super Tuesday. That’s the day that will give clarity — or point to a brokered convention.
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