Big Brother Gov't Seeks to Tax and Track All Drivers

“Oh, say can you see…the land of the fee, and home of the slave?” Americans really better wake up before it’s too late. Perhaps it already is.

Today Pete Kasperowicz of The Hill reported that the Obama administration, following a March Congressional Budget Office report, has “floated” the idea of taxing drivers per mile. Kasperowicz writes:

The plan is a part of the administration’s ‘Transportation Opportunities Act,’ an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.

…Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations. (my emphasis)

If this doesn’t alert you to the direction of America, I don’t know what will. The government wants to tax Americans for simply leaving their homes, and track their cars via mandatory GPS chips.

According to the bill, a new sub-agency, the Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office, will be funded to the tune of $300 million to “study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.”

The White House claims they did not create or support the measure because “This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not take into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”

But, why would they need a GPS tracking device to accomplish this goal? Couldn’t they simply raise gas taxes? After all, it’s a consumption-based tax that supposedly goes into road maintenance.

This is a classic case of introducing draconian legislation to float the most extreme path in order get half of what they really expected to get. They know there will be a loud uproar over mandates for GPS mileage trackers in every car. Yet, they’ll make the argument that it’s needed because of our crumbling infrastructure, crippling debt, or to help reduce global warming. Meanwhile, they’ll bloat the government even more with this new well-funded agency to prepare the “public awareness communications plan” — aka propaganda. When it’s all over, they’ll leave the tracking to LoJack and your smart phone to relieve the anxiety about Big Brother intrusions and simply raise the gas taxes nationally. And once again, citizens will be fleeced by the government but they’ll somehow be content with the compromise.

This is a new proposal at the Federal level, but has been proposed in a handful of states aimed at raising revenues. An active program in Oregon is for electric vehicles which are obviously exempt from paying gas taxes at the pump. But the proposal for Massachusetts and the nation is reportedly for all cars.

Below is a recent segment on Fox News to have a mock debate about it. The host apparently got the propaganda talking points already as he subtly sells the idea throughout the segment. While Senator Scott Brown was right to call it Orwellian, he’s just playing his role, too. Get ready to accept more slavery.