The toll of opposing road tolls

The Democrats in the Connecticut Generally Assembly usually get their way. That must seriously gall the GOP legislators at the Capitol. Generally speaking, if they stand on principle, the Republicans lose. If they stand on cold-blooded partisanship, they lose. Even if they do some honest horse-trading, they still lose.

One can imagine that after a while it no longer matters why the Republicans oppose Democratic legislative proposals, such as a measure to bring back highway tolls to fund, repair and rebuild Connecticut’s infrastructure. What matters is opposing them.

While I understand the wisdom of expedience and the benefit of telling constituents that you fought the good fight, I don’t find opposition for opposition’s sake intellectually satisfying. I want to understand why the Republicans oppose tolls even if the Republicans opposing them don’t. And in understanding why, the Democrats can meet Republicans head-on in a good-faith fight, instead of going around them as they do. That’s just galling.

There are a medley of reasons the Republicans oppose tolls, but here’s an inventory offered by the Honorable Senator Toni Boucher from the state’s 26th senatorial district. Implementing tolls, she says, will: impact most instate drivers; increase congestion; jeopardize federal funding; add to the burden of the gas tax; increase the cost of food sales along tolled roads; and hurt border businesses. She adds that toll stations will take years to build and toll revenues could be raided by future administrations.

On the surface, these all seem perfectly reasonable, and if you tend to side with the Republicans more than the Democrats, this list of complaints might be all you care to know about the issue. But toll advocates have addressed most of these concerns, and the fact that they have addressed them reasonably and empirically suggests that the Republicans don’t have reasons for opposing tolls outside of their bedrock conservative opposition to the power of the government to tax individuals. I’ll get to this political philosophy in a moment, but first let’s take a look at what advocates say.

First, bear in mind that tolls would generate about $60 billion in revenue over 25 years. If you have ever blown a tire on I-95 or gotten stuck on a train waiting for the Walk Bridge in Norwalk to close, you know we need every penny of that $60 billion to rebuild our roads and bridges. Second, that money would be barred by statute from being used for anything that’s not infrastructure. Yes, tolls would be in addition to the gas tax, but cars are now more fuel efficient or they are increasingly electric. I really doubt most drivers will notice.

As for federal funding, tolls are lawful. Traffic may snarl at first as drivers avoid paying tolls. But transportation experts say the inconvenience over time outweighs the cost of tolls. It’s going to impact in-state drivers — of course. Some say we should force only out-of-state drivers to pay, but that happens to be illegal. As for the impact on businesses, particularly the Danbury Mall, which Boucher represents, yes, it might hurt profits, but that presumes that any cost will deter shoppers. Common sense tells us the last thing on a bargain-hunting shopper’s mind is highway tolls.

About the only good reason Boucher lists above is that toll stations will take years to build, but that’s not a good reason to oppose tolls. That’s just complaining about process, which is negotiable.

So advocates have addressed opponents’ concerns, but opponents are unlikely to change their minds. That’s partly partisanship. If Democrats want it, the Republicans don’t. But that’s also partly due to legitimate philosophical differences. Generally speaking, the Democrats don’t oppose tolls, because they don’t oppose the government’s power to tax. The Republicans, however, do.

To some Republicans (let’s not say all), taxation is akin to forfeiture. My friend Noah Rothman, who writes for Commentary, a conservative magazine, recently put it this way: Taxation is “the seizure of assets that were secured as the result of — optimally — creating or doing something that someone else found valuable.”

You can see why some Republicans in Hartford might apply this to tolls. But I don’t get it. The Grand Old Party’s founder, Abraham Lincoln, saw little daylight between us and those who rule in our name. He said the government is of, by and for the people. We tax ourselves and we ourselves decide what to do with the money.

We are paying one way or another. You either pay a toll or you pay for a car repair or pay for the time you could have spent doing something else while stuck in traffic for hours. I understand the need for principle, but principle is no substitute for reality.