< PREVIOUS ] [ 1996 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Around here, it's pretty windy this time of year, and the wind can come in force from any direction. Washington, D.C., must suffer from the same problem, if our weather vane political leaders are any guide.
From the 1992 election, when Ross Perot made it an
issue, until quite recently, deficit reduction
was
the hot topic in Washington. Every time you turned on the
tube, there was some candidate or office-holder explaining
how government spending must be brought down, and revenues
increased, or else the United States of America would
totter into bankruptcy, with dire consequences for T-bill
holders and other important people.
Deficit reduction was so important back then that a tax increase even passed. Part of the package was a gasoline tax of 4.3 cents per gallon, the proceeds going to reduce the national debt.
That was considerably less than the 50 cents a gallon that Perot had proposed, but it did indicate that cutting the debt was important.
But not that important. Gasoline prices rise -- they do every year around Memorial Day when people start driving more -- and suddenly, nobody cares about reducing the deficit.
If it was important in 1993, why isn't it important in 1996? Did the federal government get out of debt when we weren't looking?
Isn't there one politician of either party in Washington
who has the backbone to say I thought deficit reduction
was important in 1993 when we passed the gasoline tax, and
I still think it's important now, and I will not vote to
repeal this tax.
If there is such a creature among the spineless, I've missed it.
Several years ago, I argued for a $10-a-gallon gasoline tax. It still seems like a good idea.
Americans would drive less, thus reducing congestion and pollution. More people would take public transportation, thus improving those systems.
More of us would walk or bicycle, thereby improving our health. Further, people would by necessity live closer to their workplaces and would be more involved in community affairs. Good land would no longer be taken out of production for blacktop and freeways.
Those who still drove would buy more efficient vehicles. They would form car pools. And they would come closer to paying the true costs of their noxious, polluting habit -- if we can tax cigarettes at an extreme rate, how much more should we tax gasoline, which besmirches entire landscapes?
Reduced oil consumption would mean reduced oil imports for an improved balance of trade, and less need to finance a huge military establishment to insure that oil fields on the other side of the world are in the right hands.
Some vehicles would still be necessary, of course. We need trash trucks, and it's hard to imagine a plumber or electrician functioning without a truck. But they could recover the increased cost of gasoline by increasing their prices.
Granted, a $10-a-gallon gasoline tax would disrupt some people's lives for a year or two, perhaps, until they adjusted. Many real-estate developers and auto dealers would have to take up honest work, but that wouldn't hurt the rest of us.
We would all benefit from the prosperity of a country that didn't import 8 million barrels every day, thus exporting $58 billion a year that might have stayed here to be invested in American enterprises.
But instead of examining ways to reduce consumption and thus improve the economy and our lives, our leaders work to increase gasoline consumption and disrupt our lives.
When gasoline supplies are tight, as reflected in higher prices, what do they do? Raise the speed limit, so we'll consume more gasoline.
The also propose to reduce the price (either by tax reduction or government-stock sales), again encouraging more consumption.
On the local level, zoning boards routinely approve distant developments, accessible only by auto -- to encourage more consumption. On the state level, they never look at alternatives to driving -- instead, they look at more lanes for more capacity for more drivers for more consumption.
In short, if you assumed that the entire purpose of government in this country was to encourage oil consumption, you'd be able to predict almost every action of government at every level from town board to U.S. Congress.
The whole idea is to make us buy more gas. Your friendly neighborhood multi-national oil company needs your money, as do those fine folks building new weapons for the next oil war.
With a $10-a-gallon tax, at least we'd get something out of this. Instead, we get smog, and those Washington winds, while strong enough to make politicians sway, can't blow away the fumes.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1996 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >