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Monday, January 5, 2009
Return taxing authority to states
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The trouble with commissions, especially those related to transportation and taxes, is that their reports represent everybody’s wish list.
Take, for example, the final report of the National Commission on Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress. Since motorists are driving less, the gas tax should be raised by 10 cents per gallon and the diesel fuel tax by 12- to-15 cents per gallon, the commission’s majority concludes. The higher tax should, too, be put on automatic pilot to increase with inflation, a majority of the group recommends.
Here’s an example, though, of why commissions are little more than covers for politicians who want to take an unpopular action — raising taxes, for instance. “In addition to putting more money into the system,” the report declares, “we also must create a system where investment is subject to benefit-cost analysis and performance-based outcomes. We need a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly; one that provides a fully integrated mobility system that is the best in the world; one that emphasizes modal balance and mobility options; one that dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries; one that is environmentally sensitive and safe; one that minimizes use of our scarce energy resources; one that erases wasteful delays; one that supports just-in-time delivery; and one that allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.”
And then, to the disbelieving and to the confused, it adds this bromide: “The good news is that we can do it. Our people need such a system and they deserve it.”
That bad news is that the to-do list contains so many mandates that none of them instruct. They’re the gibberish of assembled interest groups shouting out slogans for a facilitator to write on a blackboard. In the end, Congress has cover — an urgent call for new infrastructure revenue because “the future of our Nation’s well-being, vitality, and global economic leadership is at stake” — and everybody goes away feeling good that the bicyclists, and the road, rail and environmental interests have found “common ground.”
I promise you: there’s always common ground to be found when the various agenda-competitors find themselves on the wish list for somebody else’s money. When the lion and the lamb are forced to reach consensus, it is that neither will go hungry and that a third party provides dinner satisfactory to both.
As with an earlier version of the commission’s report, it is the minority report that warrants attention. It was offered by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and by two other Bush appointees, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary, and Rick Geddes, a Cornell University professor.
The surface transportation system’s greatest challenge is not connecting places or providing farm-to-market roads, but “the consistent, precipitous decline in transportation system performance and the increased politicization of transportation investment decisions,” the three write. “Throughout the recent history of our highway and mass transportation systems, engineering and political considerations have trumped economic ones.”
Their recommendation would not be to raise taxes, but to try approaches such as congestion-pricing based on time-of-day usage. That, which according to Brookings Institute economists, could yield $120 billion a year if applied in the 98 largest urban areas. Private-sector toll roads, charges based on vehicle miles traveled and real cost-benefit analysis with priorities set based on performance, are also among their suggestions.
They would, too, phase out the dominant federal role and the 18.5-cents federal gas tax except for “truly federal objectives, such as preservation and improvement of the Interstate Highway System,” interstate freight movement, safety programs, and projects of national or regional significance.
The latter argument is the most immediately compelling. Taxing authority should be returned to the states. State officials, and not Congress, should be making decisions about what projects are built where. The first money should be spent on improving major transportation corridors.
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Presidential Obama, Campaign Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the spirit of New Year cheer, let the record show that Thinking Right’s official position, declared at the start of the first week of the year that will begin the administration of President-elect Barack Obama, is upbeat, positive, optimistic and filled with the aforementioned good cheer.
So far there’s not a lot to criticize. He appears to have backed off the hard-and-fast timetable for retreat from Iraq. His Cabinet appointments — except for the selection of U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Labor Secretary — range from not-alarming to fully-acceptable. And with Solis, what’s the worry? It’s not like she’ll be making labor policy. And besides, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress would do far more harm to the economy than anything a Labor Secretary could propose.
And in the spirit of getting rid of potential trouble before it becomes Obama’s problem, he’s canned his announced candidate for Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, before he goes before the Senate for confirmation. A Grand Jury in New Mexico is investigating the link between campaign contributions to Richardson and a state transportation contract for more than $1 million. Richardson withdrew his nomination Sunday, denying that he’d been pushed.
The latest evidence that Obama may be more policy-centered than his hard-Left supporters can endure are reports that he and congressional Democrats are considering a package of tax cuts amounting to about $310 billion as part of a two-year stimulus package that could reach $775 billion. The package would be about 60 percent spending, 40 percent tax cuts.
If so, as Jonathan Weisman and Naftali Bendavid report in The Wall Street Journal, the two-year impact could exceed the first two years of President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cut ($174 billion) or his 2003 tax cut ($231 billion). Details are not out, but business tax cuts to spur job creation would be an element.
The Democratic Congress is still a concern (please tell me the comedian Al Franken is not the winner in Minnesota). The party’s leaders are discussing how to proceed quickly with legislation on equal pay for women, more aid to homeowners, stem cell research, offshore drilling and more spending on children’s health insurance.
The New Year’s optimism could — and probably will — vanish in policy disagreements to come. But for now, the presidential Obama is far superior to the campaign Obama.
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