Next for Tea Party? Eliminating federal funding for mass transit and the federal gas tax?

[mrstickball]

richardhutnik said:

mrstickball said:

thranx said:
makes sense to me. If the feds want to raid the gas tax for other uses (suprise suprise the feds just doing what they want with your taxes) why not just take that money away and leave it up to states like it should of been in the first place. I hope the states start trying to get more power from the feds.

Thats generally the mantra of the Tea Party. Less federal government, and more state power.

If you are unfamiliar with mass transit in America, it is a boondoggle. I understand it works in countries such as Europe, but due to population densities, most systems incur significant losses. For example, the government has been covering Amtrack's losses for decades, costing taxpayers billions of dollars a year in what amounts to nothing more than subsidies.

States are the ones that invest in infrastructure. Each state has its own gas tax, and is directly responsible for administration of roads, and their populace.

To pay for the trains in the Mid-Hudson area of NY, the MTA got the state to pass a tax on each employee an employer hires in the area.  This is ALL THE WAY along the rail line, from Poughkeepsie to NYC.  The tax correlates one to one with an employer hiring, and definitely would deter employment.  It fails to take account for where people commute also.  If anyone can find a documented case of someone taking a train from Westchester to work in Poughkeepsie, let me know.

....Which shows you that subsidies (taking money to pay for a given project that is likely unsustainable from an economic vantage point) doesn't work. Almost every train system works that way. I've ridden all kinds of great trains like San Fransisco (BART), and Portland (Tri-Met) and they take significant losses in revenue each and every year because they simply aren't sustainable. This isn't to say mass transit always never works, but it shouldn't be pushed on people and in areas that it isn't sustainable unless you stack the deck with subsidies as you mentioned.

Its the same reason our Governor Kaisch killed the various light rail bills in Ohio. We were going to get $500 million in federal funding for a Cinci to Cleveland corridor along I-71. The problem with such a plan is that once the money is spent on the rail, who pays for maitenance? We do. And we'd lose hundreds of millions like we have on the turnpike (which is still about $500 million in the red, and is being privatized this year, which will make the government money for the first time in history).