Money For Roads Diverted January 8, 2009
Posted by The Underground Conservative in Spending, Taxes, Transportation.trackback
As Gomer Pyle might have said: “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”
All that money you are supposedly paying for road construction and maintenance? Only about 1/3 is actually going to where it was intended.
The rest goes to bureaucratic bloat and things like mass transit, and some is even skimmed off for social spending.
According to the latest figures from the Federal Highway Administration, motorists gave state and local government $40.3 billion in 2005 for the ability to drive and own a vehicle. Gasoline taxes accounted for $20.5 billion in revenue while registration fees and miscellaneous taxes generated $13.5 billion. State and local toll roads also collected $6.4 billion from motorists.
After accounting for administration and overhead, $28.5 billion remained for all fifty states to spend in 2005. Of this amount, only $13 billion was spent on state and local road construction and maintenance.
A total of $8.9 billion of motorists’ money was diverted into unrelated uses. A total of $1.4 billion went to mass transit and $7.5 billion was used for social spending. The remaining amount went to related uses such as paying down transportation debt and funding highway law enforcement.
You can read the report here.
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I don’t know what’s more “shocking”; 2/3rds going for something other than roads or 29.3% getting skimmed right off the top for “administration and overhead”.
It’s a government operation. What did you expect? To them it’s like Monopoly money.