Where a conservative stand is NOT good for taxpayers

Minnesota Congressman's Protest Leads to 8% Cut in Federal Dollars for His State

Minnesota Central

The next time that your filling up your tank, remember that [Rep.] John Kline’s protest is sending your Minnesota tax dollars elsewhere.

That’s right.

For every gallon of gas that you buy, you pay a Federal Tax of 18.4 cents per gallon. Originally these tax dollars went into the general treasury, but since the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was established, it stipulated that 100% of the gas tax be deposited into Highway Trust Fund. Those dollars are then re-distributed back to the states. If your congressman is doing his job, all your Federal Tax dollars will be returned to your state resulting in jobs and well maintained infrastructure.

But John Kline decided to protest the system. The result according to Bob Hofstad of MnDOT is that the state receives about 92 cents for every dollar that its residents send to Washington. According to Tony Kellen, president of the Minnesota Public Transit Association, about 40 percent of the money in the state's transportation budget comes from the federal gas and diesel tax.

Now, Kline may give the impression since his favorite imported vodka is SurReal (from Latvia) that he would be a pretty savvy investor, but an 8% loss is not a good return on our tax dollars. Now, maybe private citizen investor Kline is okay with that, but these are our public dollars.

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