Monday letters: No new taxes needed to fix SC roads

There is plenty of money to fix the roads. What we need is for our elected officials to prioritize expenditures

The reason it’s a bad idea to raise the gas tax to fix the state’s roads — and they surely need fixing — is that it’s not a reliable income stream. If the price of gas were still high, we wouldn’t even be considering it. Since it’s low, we can add to the tax, and when the price goes back up — as it surely will — revenue falls because people don’t buy as much gas at a high price as they do at a lower price (Economics 101).

Moreover, raising the gas tax hits the working poor hardest because they have to buy gas to get to work. The rich will always have enough money to buy what they need at any price; but raising the price of such an essential at a time when many people don’t have jobs is lunacy.

Legislators get elected by talking about lowering taxes and tightening expenditures, but when they get elected, there is no end to the good things they can think up to do for us each day. We are all too dependent on government, and government wants it that way. Enough already.

I would be happy to help out by going through the budget and coming up with a half billion dollars of frivolity each year that could be diverted to road improvements.

Prioritize expenditures. Any legislator who can’t do this owes us all the courtesy of resigning so he can be replaced with someone who can.

Columbia

This story was originally published May 17, 2015 at 7:29 PM.