Originally Posted by woj

"Federal gas taxes have typically not been devoted exclusively to highways ? The federal gas tax began its life as a deficit-fighting measure under President Herbert Hoover decades before the Interstate Highway System. Only during a brief 17-year period beginning in 1956 did Congress temporarily dedicate gas tax revenues to construct the Interstate network, a project completed in the 1990s. Since 1973, the gasoline tax has been used to fund a variety of important transportation priorities and has periodically been used to reduce the federal deficit."

"Many states use gas tax revenue for a variety of purposes ? While many states have historically dedicated their own state gasoline taxes to highways, that decision has not been universal. According to Federal Highway Administration data, roughly 20 cents of every dollar collected in state gas taxes, motor vehicle fees or tolls nationwide is used for public transportation and other governmental purposes. Many of the states that do use gasoline taxes solely for highways do so because they remain bound by constitutional earmarks of gasoline taxes imposed three-quarters of a century ago, regardless of whether those decisions still make sense today."

source: http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports...pay-themselves



so tax was setup that was supposed to fund the highways... for many years there was a surplus, which instead of being used to grow the fund, was pissed away on "variety of purposes"... now when last few years there is a deficit, everyone is saying "federal income taxes are funding the highways"... when in reality, it's more like paying back what was stolen from the fund for "variety of purposes" in the first place...