Oh! Wait a minute ....

Rising prices are fueling opposition to Transportation Climate Initiative

“Look, I couldn’t get that through when gas prices were at historic low,” the governor replied when asked if he would press lawmakers to reconsider joining the initiative they balked at last spring. “So I think legislators are pretty clear, it’s going to be a tough rock to push when the gas prices are so high, so no.”

But rising gas prices aren’t the only only obstacle.

“There are some people who are living on such a tight margin that anything that adds to their regular expenses is going to put a squeeze on them and put them in a tight hardship,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, one of the key players wary of the TCI.

Though Looney calls the regional initiative’s environmental goals laudable, the program’s potential impact on some of Connecticut’s most vulnerable households remains a concern for him.

TCI would raise taxes on fuel producers — which would be passed onto all motorists at the pump — adding about 5 to 9 cents per gallon by 2023, according to the Lamont administration.

But many don’t know there is a second levy imposed on gasoline at the wholesale level. And while gasoline distributors shift the entire cost of Connecticut’s 8.1% wholesale fuel tax — plus a surcharge that effectively boosts the rate to 8.81% — onto local filling stations, those stations then pass it all onto motorists.

…Consumers currently pay 47.6 cents per gallon in state taxes alone: a 25-cent retail tax and 22.6 cents to cover the wholesale levy.

You may recall that that hidden — CT prohibits gasoline stations from posting tax amounts in public view — second ax of 8.81% was originally imposed under the guise of it being a “windfall profits tax”, which gas companies were forbidden to pass on to their customers. Everyone know that the ban on pass-through provision was illegal, but the legislature whooped it through anyway, telling the chumps they represented that it was “socking it to big oil”, and when the courts struck down the provision they kept the tax anyway,

Polls conducted over the years consistently show that Americans are all for fighting global warming, but balk at paying anything to do it. Only 52% would support paying $1 extra a month on their energy costs, and a healthy 80% reject the idea of paying an extra $50 a month. These naive dolts obviously have no idea that their betters intend to whack them by the tens of thousands of dollars to save the planet, and by the time they do it will be too late. But gasoline taxes, they can see and feel immediately, so maybe there’s hope yet.