I would like to start out by thanking Obama for telling us the truth about why we should not suspend the federal gas tax for 3 months during the summer. It shows government for what it really is, dependent on our tax dollars to the extent that Washington politicians feel they are entitled to our hard earned money. We have an entitlement mentality in this nation that is becoming increasingly dangerous. There are entitlement programs for the poor who pay no taxes, there is an entitlement mentality that government needs to provide us with all sorts of services, and now the next logical step, government’s entitlement to our wages.

Obama makes a valid claim that suspending the fuel tax will cut the governments revenues earmarked for federal transportation, roads and bridges. But when has a lack of revenue ever prevented the government from spending as much as it wants to? Democrats preach a PAYGO policy, yet when they failed to come up with a means to pay for the SCHIP program by tax increases, they voted to pass it regardless. The real question here is how do we fix a problem that government has created in the first place? The high oil prices are due to a surge in demand while artificially restricting supply. Now Obama’s solution is for us to use less oil and find alternatives to oil. Without 3 months of the federal gas tax, we won’t be able to build any new highways, which makes him sound a lot lock Huckabee’s argument that a stimulus package would be better spent on building a new lane on an interstate from Maine to Florida. His argument is that it won’t save the taxpayers much money anyway, only 30 cents a day, so why bother to cut it at all. Obama hits wide of the target on this one.

This debate over the gas tax has shown us the truth about the mentality in Washington. Politicians feel that it’s governments right to a portion of our money and then they get to decide just how much that is. They preach to certain groups of people that they are entitled to certain government programs, now because of these programs were are obligated to pay more of our hard earned money to Washington. Obama even wants to raise the capital gains tax rate from the current’ level of 15% to 28% knowing that tax revenues on capital gains tax would decrease! His justification? Because it’s not fair. What’s really not fair is the government’s continued over spending and wanting to raise taxes in order to pay for their lack of responsibility to balance the budget.