by James A. Bacon
The state and federal tax codes don’t do enough to redistribute income and wealth to make “progressives” happy. When 40 percent of U.S. households don’t pay federal income tax, what’s a lefty to do?
The latest initiative: exempt lower-income people from tolls for the Downtown and Midtown tunnels in Hampton Roads.
Sure, the U.S. has a vast array of welfare programs, from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program (SNAP), from housing assistance to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Yeah, lower-income families enjoy all manner of benefits from free lunches at schools to means-tested financial aid for college. And to be sure, a vast array of nonprofit groups, supported by philanthropy, endeavors to fill gaps in the social safety net.
Then, of course, there’s an enormous black market for goods and services, estimated to run between 6% and 12% of the economy, in which maybe $2.5 trillion a year of income is never declared, which means that many lower-income Americans are less poor than reported.
But no amount of munificence is enough. Lefties can always find enough hardship cases to perpetuate their view that the American democratic-market-welfare state is as inequitable and oppressive as any social system found on the planet, to justify carving out even more preferences for low-income people.
The latest battlefront is transportation. This battle isn’t taking place in Congress. It’s playing out locally.
Virginia, like much of America, already provides transportation subsidies for poor people. A big justification for supporting buses, rail and other forms of mass transit is that poor people can’t afford to drive cars (even though 76% of households in poverty actually do own a car). Insofar as mass transit requires billions of dollars of subsidies every year — the Washington Metro receives more than $1 billion a year in state, local and federal support — this form of transportation disproportionately benefits the poor.
As a kicker, Washington metro riders who qualify for SNAP also get 50% off their Metro bus and rail tickets.
But deep blue Washington is not the only place where transportation subsidies for the poor are gaining traction. In Hampton Roads, where local leaders at least acknowledge that many poor people do have cars, a toll-relief program applying to all the region’s tunnels provides a 50% discount for drivers earning up to $65,000 a year, if they use EZ Pass transponders.
The expanded toll relief, according to The Virginian-Pilot, will provide 100% off 14 trips weekly through the tunnels for two-axle passenger vehicles. Peak hour tolls run more than $3 per trip for EZ Pass riders, implying a subsidy of up to $42 per week, or more than $2,000 per year.
Who is paying for the expanded benefit?
Reports The Virginian-Pilot: “Included in the state’s budget passed in May is $101 million in toll relief for the Hampton Roads tunnels, with a $77 million earmark in the first fiscal year and $24 million in the second.”
There are restrictions to the subsidy: only citizens of Hampton, Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth and Franklin need apply. The budget sets a deadline of January to implement the new funding.
Bacon’s bottom line: There’s an oppressed class in the United States, alright — it’s the taxpaying middle class. We are sheep to be shorn.
And, for all the trillions spent ameliorating their condition, the poor are still with us.
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