Democrats “Infrastructure Bill” Puts Biden’s Winky In The Wringer

Looks like, true to form, the Democrats can not NOT tell a lie. The “infrastructure” bill is just loaded with all sorts of crap that has nothing to do with infrastructure (hard goods used to facilitate manufacturing and transport of goods).

In this case, it is a “Pilot Program” to bring “Per Mile” taxes and tracking to you and your vehicles. Want to move about the country? Pay a tax for every mile you drive… But don’t worry, this is just the camel nose under the tent, not the whole camel. That doesn’t happen until they find that they like collecting the money, know the best way to collect the money, and then start collecting all the money… As if $5 / gallon gasoline was not enough…

Fortunately, Biden made a big deal about “Read My Lips, No New Taxes!”… Oh, Wait, that was a different Deep State Globalist President… About “No new taxes on folks under $400,000” (or your average hamburger flipper after the Hyperinflation of printing a few dozen $Trillion new dollars works through the system…) So that puts Biden’s Tax Winky in the wringer. He’s (or really, his mouthpiece that can actually talk when not “circling back around to that”…)said he will be forced to veto the bill if that stays in. Riiiight… a Democrat vetoing a bill because it would raise taxes… This I gotta see.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/infrastructure-national-mileage-tax-red-line

Bolding by me.

Infrastructure bill floats national mileage fee despite Biden’s $400,000 tax hike ‘red line’
by Christian Datoc | | August 03, 2021 02:15 PM

The $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure accord would institute a multiyear “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot” program that, without future intervention from the White House, could potentially violate one of President Joe Biden’s previously stated red lines.

Top White House officials emphatically stated for months that paying for the infrastructure investments by indexing gas taxes to inflation or instituting new electric vehicle mileage fees were hard red lines for the president on the grounds that they would raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 per year.

Yet, the new per-mile user fee pilot, outlined in section 13002 of the bill, does leave those people open to tax vulnerabilities pegged to personal vehicle mileage. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are directed to provide recommendations to Congress three years into the pilot’s life cycle, at which time Congress could choose to pass new legislation implementing national per-mile fees fully as an established funding source for infrastructure improvements.

Guess what this will do to EVERY product and service that depends on vehicle transportation… as in all of them almost…

[..]
The mileage fee pilot program was first raised by Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware and Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia in a separate infrastructure proposal introduced in March.

Hey, West Virginia! Dump Capito double quick!…

The program itself directs Buttigieg and Yellen to “establish, on an annual basis, per-mile user fees for passenger motor vehicles, light trucks, and medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which amount may vary between vehicle types and weight classes to reflect estimated impacts on infrastructure, safety, congestion, the environment, or other related social impacts.”

Hang on to your hats folks, expect Pick-Up-Trucks, RVs, and anything a Republican might like to be found guilty in the Court Of Climate Change!

This thing needs to have a spike in it NOW.

Also, say Good Bye! to any remaining privacy:

As written, the pilot program would be funded through 2026 and enlists volunteer drivers “from all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico” to test “any of the following vehicle-miles-traveled collection tools,” including:

Third-party on-board diagnostic (OBD-II) devices
Smartphone applications
Telemetric data collected by automakers
Motor vehicle data obtained by car insurance companies
Data from the states that received a grant under section 6020 of the FAST Act
Motor vehicle data obtained from fueling stations
Any other method that the secretary considers appropriate

But don’t worry, Biden is “On it!”:

White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other top administration officials have maintained for weeks that “any tax on vehicle mileage” violates Biden’s $400,000 red line.

“Well, first, let me say that, you know, the president’s pledge was not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year,” Psaki said on June 26, just days before Biden gave his blessing to the initial, bipartisan infrastructure framework. “The proposed gas tax or vehicle mileage tax would do exactly that. So that is a nonstarter for him. I’d also note, for the mathematicians in the room: That only raises $40 billion, which is a fraction of what this proposal would cost.”

She explained on July 6 that “one of the core reasons why the president was opposed — vehemently opposed — to a gas tax and any tax on vehicle mileage” was “because he felt that would fall on the backs of Americans, and that was a bottom line, red line for him.”

/snark; in the extreme, I think…

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