There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
I hated high school economics, but I did take one thing from those boring classes and my annoying teacher, the concept that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So today when I read in the Dallas Morning News that Texans want more highways to drive on but they don’t want to pay for them, I was again reminded of the economic phrase that once was silly to me, but has proven relevant even still today.
Here is the deal, when it comes to Transportation funding the entire state of Texas needs to have one big come to Jesus meeting and understand that the state can not make new highways magically appear from out of nowhere. If we are ever to truly make progress on this issue, we as taxpayers need to surrender the fantasy and understand that new roads cost money so one way or another, we’re going to have to pay for them.
So lets look at some of the options. We could index the gas tax and keep it wholly with transportation, that is one idea. In truth, this is probably a responsible move that will never happen. Mainly because it probably won’t bring in enough money for new roads. I’ve read that we could index the gas tax and also do away with the 1/4 push over to education and all that extra 6.5 billion every two years would do would bring us to the point that we could reasonably afford the maintenance on our existing highways.
It’s true, with the rising cost of construction and the growing demand for maintenance on what we currently operate, indexing the gas tax is a step forward, but it isn’t going to get us all the way home. And besides, 72 percent of respondents to the Texas Lyceum poll said that they oppose raising the gas tax. Scratch that idea.
So what’s next? If we’re against raising taxes - which is not necessarily a bad thing - then we could give transportation funding a bigger piece of the current pie, right? Brilliant! I just solved all of our problems right there. Except there is one catch…we still wind up paying, just not directly.
Exactly how, you ask? Well, consider that (providing my numbers are correct) highway funding makes up about five or six percent of our general appropriations bill, and to grow that we would have to start taking money from elsewhere. So what budget item to we raid? What is expendable?
We could take it from agencies of education - they are the biggest budget item so Lord knows they probably have room to spare - but Texans would still wind up paying for road construction in the form of underfunded public schools and even further increased tuition rates at our universities. Human Services could be an option, but that would mean less money available for CHIP, Medicaid, food-stamps and other social service programs that Texas as a whole depends on. So even though that single mom can get to work faster on her new highway, it would come at the cost of her child losing their CHIP coverage.
Since we can’t grow the size of the budget pie, cutting highway funding a bigger slice leaves us paying for transportation projects through the suffrage of other areas of funding. Since that’s out, how else can we fund road construction?
We could use toll roads? User fees are an option, but one that has not exactly been welcomed by open arms. Face it, even if it means cutting your commute in half, you hate the concept of toll roads more than you hate your mother in-law popping in for a visit. At least that’s how sixty six percent of the polled audience responded when asked if they favored tolling as a way to finance new highways.
Local option sales tax is just another tax increase, and we as Texans are well documented to be against that. We could continue to put out Transportation bonds, but how far in the hole are we willing to put ourselves in exchange for new highways, and what impact with that have on future state budgets? We can’t count on the feds, because when it comes to the collection and redistribution of the federal gas tax, Texas ends up a giver and not a receiver.
So that brings us back to the magic act, except those of us who live in reality know that we can’t close our eyes and wish new highways. I know it sucks (truly, I do) but if we as taxpayers truly want more transportation infrastructure then we are going to have to bite the bullet and understand that one way or another, we’re going to have to pay for it.
Believe me, I wish it weren’t true, but at the end of the day there is just no such thing as a free lunch, or free roads for that matter.