No one likes the cruddy roads in Michigan. But no one wants to pay to fix them.
That's the political reality at hand right now, as Gov. Rick Snyder tries to shame lawmakers into walking the plank and voting for
. His plan is to effectively hike the gas tax 14 cents and raise vehicle registration fees, the so-called "
," 60 percent.
Gov. Rick Snyder presents his 2013 State of the State speech.
The alternative plan is to hike the sales tax to pay for roads, which would require a vote of the people.
The fact that Snyder is pushing for this at a time when gas is hitting $4 a gallon for no apparent reason is unfortunate. There's also the inconvenient fact that many people are doing their 2012 taxes and are
, courtesy of tax changes
.
There's a l
but some of the ways are: eliminating the $600 per child tax credit, axing the adoption and stillborn credit, eliminating the credit for donations to charity, nixing the credit for college tuition, reducing the homestead property tax credit and taxing pension income.
How much more you'll pay varies widely. A married couple making $55,000 with two kids is paying $739 more -- probably the equivalent of a mortgage payment. A retired couple born after 1952 with $53,000 in taxable income is now slammed with an additional $3,100,
Ouch.
Right now, you might be thinking that can't be right. Republicans believe in cutting taxes. Well, in Michigan, they do if you own a business.
.
But somebody has to pay to keep the lights on in the Capitol and for Snyder's salary. That's where you and I come in.
.
Now we're constantly told that this is somehow OK because businesses are "job providers," which sounds a bit too medieval for my taste, conjuring up images of benevolent landowners generously offering up lives of backbreaking labor for hapless serfs. "Job creator" is a bit better, it still misses the mark.
The reality is that I am a job creator and so are you. We take our hard-earned money and buy things with it that keeps people employed and businesses open. (Just like
. Sorry, Mitt Romney).
Republicans have yet to give me a tax break for any of that. In fact, they're disincentivizing my job creation powers. They want to tax consumers more through the gas and birthday taxes, or alternatively, by hiking sales taxes, so I have less money to spend, and thus create fewer jobs.
I would just like to say that this kind of tax policy
is very bad for my economic situation, and thus, for the economy in general. If consumers don't know how much more we'll have to pay in gas or sales taxes, we may stop spending as much money, especially on high-end purchases like new cars or TVs that keep the economy humming.
If only we had lobbyists to make our case for us. Where is anti-tax superhero
when you need him?
So it's not surprising then that the whole road tax hike has gone over like a lead balloon with taxpayers.
Last year, the Republican firm Target Point Consulting did a survey for transportation funding advocates that
, with some pretty sobering results. The firm even did focus groups with Tea Partiers to see what messages worked.
There wasn't much good news.
A full 84 percent of voters say the tax is too high or about right already. The poll found that 52 percent said gas taxes are too high, 32 percent said they're about right and 5 percent said they're too low.
As for vehicle registration fees, 91 percent said they were too high or about right. Thirty-six percent said they were too high, 55 percent said about right and 2 percent said too low. Told the average fee is $100, 40 percent said that was too high, 52 percent said about right and 3 percent said too low.
When voters were asked how much they were willing to pay for infrastructure, 44 percent -- the highest number -- said nothing. and 31 percent said they didn't know. Just 13 percent said $20 or more per year, 8 percent said $10 to $19 and 6 percent said $1 to $9. The question asked wasn't exactly neutral, either:
"Independent studies have shown that Michigan does not have adequate funds available for transportation projects. How much extra a month would you be willing to pay in order to ensure that Michigan gets the roads, bridges and transportation infrastructure it needs?"
Now after being told just how bad the roads were and how much money was needed, 53 percent of voters could be convinced to pay $10 a month (far less than what Snyder wants), as long as the Legislature tries to find money in other ways, like finding efficiences in construction.
But it took a lot of work to get them there. And I doubt too many lawmakers want to roll the dice on even bigger tax hikes.
So how do we fix the roads? Well, let's go to who really wants this. That would be the road construction lobby and business groups like the Michigan Chamber of Commerce. They argue that bad roads are bad for business. Fair enough.
Michigan also has the highest truck limits in the country, as a thank you to businesses (most folks don't drive a semi in their spare time). And heavy trucks tear up roads far worse and far faster than our little old cars and SUVs.
The solution is pretty simple. Lower* weight limits as part of a long-term strategy (which Snyder is supposedly all about) and enact a business tax surcharge. I'll leave it up to economists to craft the fairest solution.
After all, the business lobby is the only entity (besides editorial boards) that's crying out for better roads. So let's invite them to pay for them -- nay, invest in them.
Now this has no future with Snyder or the GOP Legislature, who want individuals to continue to subsidize the needs of businesses, which is, in essence, class warfare.
But somehow I'm guessing a corporate income tax surcharge would play pretty well with voters. Certainly it would be far more popular than forcing folks to shell out hundreds of dollars more each year for gas and birthday taxes.
Susan J. Demas is a political analyst and an award-winning journalist. She can be reached at sjdemas@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter here.
*corrected