With gas prices falling and bouncing at a 5 year low, politicians can only see the green that can come their way with the prospect of raising gas taxes.  Since we’ve been trained to accept higher gas prices over the past decade, do they assume we won’t question them raiding our wallets even further?  Writes the Denver Post editorial board:

It should be a time Americans and politicians agree to pay the piper and raise the tax. The pain would be less obvious than when prices were over $3.

The federal gas tax was last raised to 18.4 cents a gallon in 1993, when gas prices were close to $1 a gallon. Revenues fund the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for highway maintenance and construction.

Not only has the tax been frozen for more than two decades, but vehicles have become more fuel-efficient over that time, leading to a massive funding imbalance.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the gas tax has lost 28 percent of its value since 1997. The group gave U.S. roads a D-grade and says the $91 billion being spent by federal, state and local authorities on roads is not enough when more than $170 billion is necessary to make any improvement.

How about this – we get politicians to stop wasting money on funding their pet projects and actually spend current tax dollars where they NEED to be spent?  Did we need a teapot museum?  Or Swedish massage for rabbits? Or, to answer the age old question asked of Libertarians, “But who will build and maintain the roads?!?!”  How about letting them be built and maintained privately. It is possible!