Editorials and Opinion Pieces

Squeeze Out Lard Before Raising Taxes

BY: Grover Norquist
DATE: June 1, 2003
SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WORD COUNT: 509

I'll tell you this much about Ronald Reagan: He didn't care for pork. Not the tasty kinds with four legs, but the ones with two who lurk in the halls of Congress and sneak into spending bills overnight.

Even in 1982, when pork spending had reached critical mass, President Reagan found himself steamrolled by the transportation spending lobby, despite his strongly worded opposition to a gas-tax increase the previous spring. And history continues to show that the transportation lobby behaves like a two-ton hog. Except the hog isn't worth its weight, and I do believe that President Bush plans to call the lobby's bluff.

Presidential opposition to the transportation lobby is no longer David against Goliath. The president and the Republican Congress have passed two successful tax cuts in two years, and they are buoyed by their most recent victory. The tables have turned, and pork is what's for dinner.

Bush proposed a transportation budget this year that remains consistent with last year's spending priorities, which apparently diverted enough pork into the pockets of the transportation lobby to fund its present crusade. Nevertheless, the lobby proposes a 5.4-cent gas tax increase to fund additional spending.

The average American family spends $660 per year, on average, on federal and state gas taxes. If the transportation lobby is successful, that burden will increase to $800 per year, a 21 percent increase. Increasing the price of a gallon of gas will affect every sector of our recovering economy.

If the transportation lobby's claims ring true -- that the gas tax increase is necessary to avert a funding crisis -- it should first propose cutting projects such as the "beautification" of public roads and stop sending needed dollars to underused light-rail systems. Roads aren't supposed to be beautiful, and light rail is useless and expensive.

Never mind that the largest diversion from the highway trust fund is a 2.86-cent cut from every 18.4 cents of federal gas tax collected, to fund low-priority projects such as hiking trails, light rail, covered bridges, historic preservation and road "beautification." The 2001 highway spending plan dedicated nearly 40 percent of funds to lower-priority uses, and the proposal supported by the transportation lobby this year would spend even more.

Meanwhile, the Davis-Bacon Act sidelines billions in construction expenditures by imposing artificial wage increases. The elimination of Davis-Bacon would aid the resolution of any serious funding crisis; the Heritage Foundation estimates that Davis-Bacon inflated highway expenditures by $2 billion last year.

The transportation lobby suspects that its odds of winning a gas tax increase are no better than 50-50. But I'd wager than the odds are worse than that. Bush isn't going to allow these periodic pleas for gas tax increases to continue on his watch.

Republicans have made it clear that they are the party of lower taxes. They won't confuse this message with a tax increase of any size, including tax increases that lubricate pork-barrel spending.

The pork has met a keen set of carving knives in this president and Congress. And they're sharpened for an appetizer.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.