California Democrats are once again proving they do not plan much of anything carefully, which shows exactly the kind of short-sighted thinking that has run the state into the ground.
As of last year, California had the highest gas tax in the country. The state has jacked up the gas tax in recent years, using the excuse that the money is needed to fix California’s roads and can’t be taken from the hundreds of billions of dollars it already spends on every useless program Democrats want to fund. In 2018, the state attorney general even intentionally wrote the gas tax repeal proposition in the most confusing way possible, leading to an 11-point swing that caused the repeal to fail.
In fact, California Democrats are so proud of the gas tax that they set up road signs to inform people the road they are driving on is funded by their ridiculously high California gas prices.
California has also tried to mandate electric vehicles, promising to ban the sale of new gas cars in the state by 2035. Under the mandate, Californians will have no choice but to buy EVs and EVs only, even if the costs remain higher than for gas cars and the EV infrastructure across the state isn’t prepared.
So, on the one hand, California wants to fund its road maintenance with an exorbitant gas tax, and on the other hand, California wants to force people to stop using gas-powered cars. Are you seeing the contradiction here?
California Democrats have seen it. The share of transportation revenue from the gas tax has dropped 5% since 2016, and legislative analysts have predicted the state will lose out on $5 billion by 2035 when the EV mandate kicks in. They are now considering a road charge that would tax drivers based on how many miles they drive, redistributing the tax burden to rural drivers and commuters. Caltrans launched a pilot program to test this plan, which concluded this past January.
Even rural EV owners, who already suffer from a lack of EV charger infrastructure in their areas, will be forced to subsidize roads for Los Angeles drivers to sit in traffic on because California can’t be expected to take money out of the other $300 billion budget to fulfill the biggest obligation a state has to its residents. Something says the road signs boasting that won’t be very well-received.
GAVIN NEWSOM CALLS CALIFORNIA MASS EXODUS CLAIMS OVER HIGH TAXES ‘BS’
This is the kind of top-notch planning California Democrats are famous for. The state planned to shift its electricity grid entirely to renewable energy sources while those sources were still unreliable, leading to a backtrack to nuclear and fossil fuels. The state is in the midst of a forced transition to EVs, which will strain the grid further, while the renewable energy grid dream remains the target.
Naturally, state Democrats would make their road maintenance plan rely on gasoline while trying to eliminate gasoline entirely from the state. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but the roads in California are paved by taxing the hell out of residents and then having to come up with a new way to tax them because the first plan wasn’t thought out well.
