Hi, I'm Denise, and this is your civic minute.
Every gallon of gas you buy in Wisconsin
includes about 51 cents in taxes,
roughly 33 cents to the state,
18 to the federal government.
People grumble about it,
but here's what that money does.
It builds and maintains the roads you're driving on.
Wisconsin's gas tax is indexed to inflation.
The federal gas tax is not.
It's been 18.4 cents since 1993.
That's over 30 years with no adjustment
in today's dollars.
It's lost nearly half its purchasing power.
The highway trust fund has been running short for years,
and Congress keeps patching it with general tax revenue
rather than raising the gas tax,
because nobody wants to be the politician
who raised gas prices.
Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry
has received federal tax breaks and subsidies
for over a century.
The roads wear out.
The subsidies do not.
That's your civic minute.
Find more at civicmedia.us.