Fight the Gas Tax

Fight the Gas Tax

The Chamber of Commerce announced last week that it wants to have an additional $.25 a gallon gas tax to fund “infra structure” projects. This comes almost immediately after the same Chamber of Commerce and its corporate members and promoters engineered giant multi-billion dollar corporate tax cuts and more multi-billion dollar personal income tax cuts. Both changes deliberately intend to transfer billions of dollars to the rich who earn their income with dividends and capital gains rather than wages.

A $.25 a gallon tax is steeply regressive and guarantees those with modest wage income will pay a higher percentage of their income in gas tax than the rich with their bloated incomes and new lower tax rates. It punishes and penalizes the working class who get to work driving and rarely have alternatives in public transportation. It further lines the pockets of contractors to pour cement with profits from cost plus work awarded by an indulgent Congress.

It is especially depressing coming as it does immediately after billions of dollars of favors already bestowed on the rich in a lopsided economy already burdened with a crude income inequality. It suggests there is no limit to how far, or how often, the privileged rich will to push the working class into a lower economic status.

I think of Republicans as no more than a band of pickpockets.