colliehauler wrote:
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I guess I wouldn't feel so bad about it but the state keeps raiding the highway fund to spend on other programs. I want good roads and don't mind paying for them. It's when they redirect the funds for other uses.
I was going to ask where that's happening. In recent years Congress has had to transfer money from the general budget to the Highway Trust fund. But then I noticed you are in Kansas, where the governor cuts taxes to boost growth. Have they been dipping into the highway fund to make up for those cuts?
But isn't the idea that certain kinds of taxes can only be spent in certain way at bit archaic - must political in nature than sound economics? The government does spend your income taxes on boosting your income. They don't spend the sales taxes on grocery stores. Cig taxes on expanded sales.
Federal gas taxes were simply the most politically palatable way of raising funds for the Interstate system in the 1950s.
