Does Obama Plan to Tax us For Driving?

 Note: This post is from November, if you wish to read the latest on this issue please click here.

I just have one question for the people who voted for Barack Obama. You didn’t really think that he was only going to tax the richest Americans, did you? Everybody knew that that claim was bullshit, right? If you didn’t at first than you should have started to question him when the claim that he would only tax those making over $250,000 was dropped to $150,000 and then dropped again to $120,000. The number kept falling, it should have been a clue.

 The truth is that Barack obama is going to tax everybody. There will be no 95% of Americans getting a tax break. If you STILL believe that you are going to have your taxes cut you might want to take a look at this article about Barack Obama’s plan to tax drivers per mile that they drive.

 Obama’s team contacted Jack Opiola who was hired by the British government to create a “congestion charging program” to tax drivers in the UK for driving during peak hours. Obama’s team wanted more information on the plan. Barack Obama also recently backed New York City major Bloomberg’s plan to tax drivers for the crime of driving into Manhattan during the day. So there is interest on his behalf to tax drivers.

  The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials submitted a plan that they hope Obama takes into consideration. It includes taxing drivers on a per mile driven basis.

Hoping to fill the gap with specifics, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) last month submitted a detailed $544 billion transportation reauthorization proposal designed to encourage the new administration to shore up the domestic economy with heavy spending on infrastructure projects. The new programs would be paid for with massive new tax hikes, including a per-mile driving tax that would begin with “proof of concept” trials as early as 2010. The tax would initially be one cent per mile and generate $32.4 billion a year. An extra one cent per gallon in the federal gasoline tax would generate another $1.8 billion, and a national sales tax on cars of one percent would generate $7.6 billion

 Who do you think that a tax per mile driven will hurt the most? Who will an increase in the gas tax hurt the most? Who will a national sales tax on automobiles hurt the most? It won’t hurt the rich, it will hurt the middle class the most. The same group of people whom Obama promised would get tax relief.

 As the economy slows and people are hurting for money Barack Obama may be planning to charge you to go to the store to buy groceries. Remember the infomercial that Barack Obama ran during the World Series that delayed the beginning of a game? In that infomercial there was a woman who said that every week she had to decide whether she could afford a whole gallon of milk or whether she would have to buy a half gallon of milk. Under this plan Obama has made her choice just a little easier by taking even more money out of her pocket just for driving to the store for that milk. It looks like a half gallon for her.

 If Obama adopts these recommendations he will be taxing the same 95% of Americans that he promised tax relief to.