Geoffrey Norman delves into the world of Washington logic:

Washington needs more money and if it doesn’t get it, your morning commute will become:

a) more expensive

b) more unpleasant

c) both

The problem, you see, is that the Highway Trust Fund is “going broke,” by the Beltway’s curious definition of the phrase.  It is sort of the way that after a round of painful “cuts,” spending somehow still goes up.

The Highway Trust Fund takes in more than 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country, so there is plenty of revenue.  Just not enough to meet Washington’s needs and desires.  People are driving more fuel efficient cars and with gas already around $4 a gallon, not taking the trips they might otherwise take. So instead of having the $50 billion that Congress budgeted, the trust fund is looking at $34 billion.

So cuts are coming, possibly as soon as August, and, as Keith Laing of The Hill reports:

Those cuts could leave drivers facing congested or damaged roads, sparking anger ahead of November’s midterms.

Sort of like closing down the monuments during one of those government shutdowns. The idea being to inflict immediate pain. …

Gasoline is not a discretionary item in the budget of most Americans.  Making it more expensive means there will be less to spend elsewhere.  The people calling for urgent measures to keep the trust fund from going broke say they are concerned about jobs.”  Theirs.

One wonders just how much pork a penny a gallon in new taxes would buy.

No talk, of course, of privatizing.  Using the tolls mechanism.

Just more taxes.  For jobs.

Tolls are controversial, to say the least. But if you’re not hearing about tolls, you’re also not hearing about the novel concept of actually spending transportation fund money on transportation-related expenses. Tom Gantert passes on this:

However, Jonathan Williams, director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council, studied the Highway Trust Fund in 2007 and found that gas taxes have been spent on far more than just crumbling highways. This raises concerns over how Highway Trust Fund money would be spent if taxes are increased.

Williams found that Highway Trust fund dollars have been spent on things such as public education, museums, parking garages and graffiti removal. He said it is premature to increase gas taxes until Americans can be assured the money would be spent on legitimate road construction projects.

“There’s just so much diversion of funds,” Williams said.

Nothing has changed since Williams’s study. Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, raised similar concerns in testimony in May to the Senate Finance Committee.

“There is no reason to raise the federal gas tax,” Edwards said. “You send the money to Washington, a lot of it gets lost in paper work and bureaucracy and pork-barrel politics.”

In his testimony, Edwards noted, since the 1970s, “fuel taxes have been siphoned off for non-highway purposes, particularly with the creation of the transit program in 1982. About one-quarter of HTF spending today is for non-highway purposes.”

O’Toole said in the last decade, Congress has diverted $55 billion of gas tax revenues to public transit.

“Congress has until the end of August to do something about the dwindling Trust Fund and until October 1 to reauthorize the gas tax,” O’Toole said. “Unless fiscal conservatives apply intense pressure, Congress is most likely to throw more General Funds at the Trust Fund and extend the current bad system another two years.”

Another way to spend less on road projects is to repeal the federal Davis–Bacon Act, which requires paying prevailing (that is, union-level) wages on road projects that receive federal funding, thus drastically increasing the cost of road projects. There is no reason for taxpayers to have to foot the bill for union wages.

The other thing that you won’t hear Obama parasites admit is that maybe gas tax revenues are down because people are taking fewer discretionary trips — for instance, vacations — in the Obama economy with gas prices heading back toward $4 a gallon. Of course, cutting back on vacations is a foreign concept to Barack and Michelle.