Toll Booths from Sea to Shining Sea

by

James K. Sayre

Copyright 1997 ©

All Rights Reserved

President Clinton recently announced a new plan that would allow individual states the right to charge tolls on previously toll-free interstate highways. What a concept: imagine toll booths set up every mile on the interstate highways from San Francisco to New York City: three thousand miles of highways: three thousand toll booths. If motorists were charged only one thin dime at each toll booth, the total cross-country charge would come to three hundred dollars. This three hundred dollars would have to be carried as dimes, which come in rolls of fifty. It would take sixty rolls of dimes to feed all the tollbooths on a one way trip across the United States. Try filling your car's glove compartment or coffee cup well with all these coins. The U. S. Mint would be kept busy just minting ten cent pieces for this endeavor.

This proposal for tolls on interstate highways should warm the cockles of the heart of every loyal American taxpaper. An new way to "contribute to the common good."

Let's look at the bright side of this idea of charging tolls on America's previously "free" freeways. It will create jobs for state tax collectors. Toll booths will have to be built and maintained. Additional state highway patrol officers will have to be hired, trained and provided with patrol cars. These new highway patrol officers will be necessary to catch the "scofflaws" who will try to avoid paying the ten cent toll.

Since President Clinton has seemingly charged a "toll" for overnight accommodation in the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, it is only right that the rest of us must pay for access to our heretofore free interstate highway system. Right? No matter that these highways have been built and maintained for forty years with only the federal gasoline tax to fund them. Progress, thy name is tax.