Taxpayers were forced to cover the $41 billion gas tax shortfall to subsidize oil companies.
Care to specifically name these subsidies?
You know, with links and stuff?
States raise sales, income & property taxes to repair roads. Federal payroll & income tax now pays over 25% of the federal highway maintenance as the US highway system has fallen from #1 in the world to below #18. Non oil or highway users are forced to pay Big-Time for asphalt & fuel from OIL companies to build & maintain roads for OIL customers to drive on.
CNN: - "Lawmakers' have simply chosen to add to what the gas tax brings in with additional money from general federal revenue -- an estimated $55 billion since the end of 2008.
General revenue now accounts for more than 25% of spending on federal surface transportation programs, according to transportation expert Emil Frankel, a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who just published a new paper on the issue."
Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, successive US administrations have equated national security with access to, and control of, oil – particularly in the Persian Gulf, which holds two-thirds of global oil reserves. In other words, as long as we need oil, we need the Persian Gulf.
Faced with this unpleasant fact, every President since Carter has chosen to defend US “access” to the Persian Gulf costing even non-oil using tax payers well over $1.04 a gallon.
A peer reviewed study from Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Princeton, pegs the cost to defend US “access” to the Persian Gulf at $7.3 trillion over 30 years. Stern looked at the cost of patrolling the Persian Gulf with aircraft carriers from 1976 to 2007. The carriers are only in the Gulf to secure oil supplies, so he views this as a great way to begin to measure military subsidies to oil.
Missouri House passes Largest Sales Tax Increase In History to repair & build Roads by buying asphalt & fuel from Oil companies to maintain roads used by Oil customers.