Obama: Tax Vehicles By The Mile

This idea has been floating around for quite a while, and has received support from various state and federal level lawmakers. But not until now has it received Presidential approval... It's official. PresBo wants to tax us all based upon how many miles we drive.

This plan, proposed in a draft transportation authorization bill called "Transportation Opportunities Act," would require that automobiles be equipped with equipment that could track the miles driven and electronically report that information to the government.

You can read a copy of the draft bill here (start reading at page 167):
http://thehill.com/images/stories/blogs/flooraction/Jan2011/draftdot.pdf

First of all, aren't drivers already being taxed on the amount they drive through gasoline taxes? It would seem so, and remember that for every gallon of gas we buy, the federal government gets 18.3 cents in tax revenue. Now, since Americans use in the neighborhood of 178 MILLION gallons of gasoline every day, that means the Feds rake in $32.5 million a day from gasoline taxes alone. That amounts to $11.8 BILLION a year.

Wouldn't taxing by the mile be merely another financial burden on Americans, limiting both personal and commercial travel?

But there's another, more sinister problem here.


For this to work, EVERY car would have to have equipment installed to gather positional data and transmit that data to the relevant tax-collecting agency. This means that, potentially, the federal government will be tracking your every movement, and could be storing that data for future use. Whether it's data that could be subpoenaed for criminal (or civil) proceedings, or data that could be abused by employees and politicians for personal or political reasons, it should be clear that giving the government access to this kind of data is an incredibly bad idea.

Granted, the plan hasn't been formulated in detail, yet, but the temptation to gather positional data on vehicles for later use by the government has to be huge. And since positional data can be easily derived during transmission via wireless communications, the collection of such data would not be difficult.

But it WOULD be an incredibly bad idea... at least, for those of us who still value limited government and individual liberty. Just because the federal government CAN track our movements doesn't mean that they SHOULD.

So this is the direction in which our President wants to take this country. George Orwell, move over... PresBo wants to implement a vision of the future that you would find familiar.

Now I ask... where is the Republican outrage for this proposal? Could it be that they don't mind very much?