O'Malley Wants You to Pay 64% More In Gas Taxes

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, never one to shy away from more taxes, is reviewing a menu of taxes increases proposed by his own "Blue Ribbon" commission to close the state's structural deficit that he created. The tax increases include a nearly 64% increase in the gas tax (raising it from 23.5 cents per gallon to 38.5 cents gallon), increasing car registration fees by 50%, and bus and rail fee increases.

Why so many surprising new taxes? Ha-ha. These aren't surprising. Every logical thinking person knew that if O'Malley got elected he would ratchet-up state spending and raid the Transportation Fund to pay for it (because he could do that). He would then go back to the voters whining and crying how we have no money to fix bridges and roads, but if we could all do our fair share and accept massive tax increases, then our investments would be worth it.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of our elected officials raiding the Transportation Fund to pay for their pet projects. Republican Bob Ehrlich did it. I believe former Governor and New York-born Paris "My Wife is My Son's Age" Glendening did it. Martin O'Malley certainly has done it.

These tax proposals, which are all but sure to be passed by the short-sighted Maryland General Assembly, would raise an estimated $870 million annually, that is until they raise the taxes even more. And that's not all that unrealistic. The state wants to spend another $12 BILLION on more transportation projects. I don't think this includes replacing bridges and paving roads. This is additional spending: Purple Line in D.C. suburbs, the Red Line in Baltimore, etc...

And what's with this "Blue Ribbon" designation? Just throw some fancy adjectives in front of your commissions' name and make it sound more important? If you appoint the members, aren't they pretty much going to do what you tell them to do? "I appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to determine who the most awesome political blogger is. Much to my surprised, they picked me!" "I appointed a Blue Ribbon commission to evaluate state spending and what to do about funding the depleted Transportation Fund and they recommended massive regressive tax increases that will hurt lower and middle income families the most."

So how many more years of O'Malley? How many more taxes can he raise? If you're keeping track, he's raised the sales tax by 20%, he pushed for massive fee increases to use the state's bridges and tunnels, a 50% increase in the alcohol tax, the cigarette tax increase, a 50% increase in many of the fishing and hunting license fees (which O'Malley said was a modest increase). The funny thing about the increase in fishing license fees is that after the state increased the fee, fewer fisherman applied for the annual license and the state actually took in LESS revenue.

So here we go again. More taxes. More O'Malley. There's many more things he could tax, I guess. So I guess I better stop complaining. I will go pump up the tires in my bike now.