Saturday, February 21, 2009

VMT tax spiked... for now anyway

The trial balloon was floated, in the time-honored way, by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Reaction was gauged -- mine (see yesterday's post, below) was apoplectic but hardly influential -- and then Joan Lowy had this follow-up story for the AP (obtained from Yahoo! News). The VMT was DOA:
President Barack Obama on Friday rejected his transportation secretary's suggestion that the administration consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy.

"It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, when asked for the president's thoughts about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's suggestion, raised in an interview with The Associated Press a [day] earlier.
So put the paving stones back... for now, anyway.

In the meantime, I need to formulate a response to Dave's comment to yesterday's post. I'll get back to you on that.

2 comments:

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I hope that sort of idea doesn't come to Britain

Anonymous said...

I didn't see this bird flying anyway; like the mythical Flat Tax that occasionally comes up (and just as quickly gets shot down), in order to be equivalent in revenue the VMT would have to be so high as to be unworkable.