I’m pretty sure, but not positive, that all those interstate road tolls go to the states. Usually, there’s a Turnpike Authority or Port Authority or something like that and those are state (or multi-state) entities.
We already pay for that wthout tolls. It’s all good. Cheers!
Toll roads and bridges charge that money to pay for the construction and maintenance of those roads and bridges. That’s it.
(Not in Illinois, but that’s another thread, ha-ha.)
That’s the point.
If Trump wants to raise taxes for his fantasy–to placate and pander to the people who go to his rallies in places that are not anywhere near a border, and who don’t have a clue about the reality of immigration–in order to solve their imaginary problems, then let him go to Congress and ask for it. Just like all the other presidents have had to do.
Oh yeah, no doubt. Trump is holding hostages in an attempt to make good on an insanely stupid campaign promise. Security? Yeah, we can fund that. Trump’s delusional bullshit? Not a red fucking cent.
Airline passengers already pay several taxes and user fees on international tickets. These include a fee on international arrival or departures. This is in addition to a 7.5% federal excise tax.
From that State Department link:
So departure is going to cost you departure tax and a federal security segment tax — $18.40 added to your ticket price. Returning to the US will cost more as you have to pay Customs, Immigration, and APHIS fees too — $33.50 or so. If there is an unequal treatment claim to be raised it seems that U.S. land border crossing is much cheaper than air.
This Seattle Times opinion piece noted that the Obama administration once floated the idea of instituting a land border crossing fee.
Many governmental services related to passports and immigration are funded by user fees in the U.S… A notable exception seems to be a lack of user fees for land border crossing. It would not seem totally out of line to fund the current operations at the border with user fees, including maintenance of existing fencing, CCTV, and sensor systems.
Five billion? Sez who? There’s a plan, a budget, the resources are all accounted for, the labor, the buying of property at market value? If not, then where the bleeding fuck did that number come from?
Yes–such a charge would be a tax, rather than a toll–though they are really the same thing–passed through Congress as all other taxes, not something that Trump just decides to implement by executive action. Considering how many people commute daily across the border (and I’m pretty sure very few people commute to the U.S. by air on a daily basis), it would be a very unpopular proposal. More unpopular than Trump’s current proposal of taking it from somewhere else.
No. None of the Interstates are federal (except in DC, I guess) but especially not the ones with tolls, which don’t even get federal funding like the free ones do.
<nitpick>
A payment charged to defray the cost for a specific government service is a fee, not a tax, so long as the price reflects the cost of providing the service. A charge that covers the cost of the salaries, materials, and infrastructure involved in providing for the orderly immigration and customs processing of border crossing would be a fee.
A tax is a compulsory charge levied by government where the revenue raised is not designated to any particular expense and there is no specific quid pro quo received by the taxpayer upon payment.
Payment to the State Department for processing a passport is a fee since the payment directly relates to the cost or providing the service. Payment to the Treasury of income taxes is a tax as it is for general raising of revenue and the taxpayer does not receive any specific quid pro quo upon payment.
Whether the Trump administration could impose a land border crossing fee without further congressional approval would depend upon particulars of law already passed by a prior Congress. Quite a few laws allow for imposition of fees at discretion of the executive. For example, 22 U.S. Code § 214 is the law that allows for the charging of fees to process a passport application. The law does not set a schedule of fees. That is left up to the Secretary of State to calculate and impose by regulation with the proviso that is should not exceed, as reasonably as possible, the cost of processing and producing the passport.
A federal Land Border Fee Pilot Project back in 1995 was executed by a change of regulation as authorized by law. See [60 FR 16039][FR 8-95]. IT was a fee designated to improve inspection processes at land borders. Something similar might could be rolled out by the current administration.
</nitpick>
Coach,
The question would be how many cars/trucks pass in a year, not a day.
The answer is over 2 million a year, so the OP could be on to something.
Let’s just do this and end the government shutdown. Could you get on board with that, pun intended?
Here is the data. Your thinking is excellent.
https://explore.dot.gov/t/BTS/views/BTSBorderCrossingAnnualData/BorderCrossingTableDashboard?:embed=y&:showShareOptions=true&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no
I think both Republicans and Democrats agree that limiting hardcore drugs and human trafficking would be a good thing So the question pivots to why can they agree to build a wall?
https://explore.dot.gov/t/BTS/views/BTSBorderCrossingAnnualData/BorderCrossingTableDashboard?:embed=y&:showShareOptions=true&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no
It’s like those deals where you get a dozen records for a penny and then find yourself on the hook for 80 billion copies of The Best of Foghat at regular club prices.
Which would raise all of 14 million, not 5 billion.
How about every car entering the US bring a brick to be placed on the boarder. At the above Trump claim that would be 1 million bricks a day to form that wall. That would be ‘cube’ or 3d rectangle of bricks 100 bricks on each side per day, which would equate to 22.5m length x 10.3m depth x 6m height per day being constructed.
For apx 3000 Km of boarder that would take 133,333 days, or 365 years to complete - funny how that worked out to the same number of days in a year .
However studies show that wall height to be effective it would need to be 30 ft or 10 m, however we can flip the depth and height numbers, giving a wall dimensions apx 20 ft thick and 30 ft high.
So far too long, so we need to require each person to bring 365 bricks per crossing, however that would surely cause a drop off in the number of people crossing.
So no it won’t work.
That reminds me… Trump- and pretty much nobody else, except his devoted followers- thinks that a wall is an absolute necessity. His followers have, so far, promised to pay about 20 million dollars towards its purchase.
So, uh, how much has Trump, himself, offered to pay? Trump is actually pretty good at spending other peoples’ money… but notoriously stingy when it comes to his own. For something which is so important to him, you’d think that he’d at least offer to match the GoFundMe for the wall.
Right, and there already is a fee with Sentri, which makes sense. But to charge $7.00 to those who can’t afford Sentri–those who wait up to two hours to cross, including kids going to school–just so that Trump can circumvent the Congress (and the will of the majority of the people), so that he can make a wall which is nothing more than political theatrics pandering to his base, doing nothing to help with the actual port of entry, hardly seems like a legitimate “fee” for an extant service (and definitely not a “toll,” since so many are pedestrians). It’s effectively just another source of revenue. The wall isn’t a service that already exists.
Almost halfway there!
:republicanmath:
Correct. The tolls go to pay for those specific stretches of roads that you have to pay a toll to access. Those stretches are ineligible for federal funding. Toll bridges do not receive federal money, either. Back (not too long ago) when there was a separate federal fund for bridges, the states’ allocations were based on the total deck area of deficient bridges in the state, excluding toll bridges. That principle still exists, you just can’t get federal money for a toll facility.
Back to the notion of building the wall out of crossing tolls, that’s nuts. Many of the people that the wall would be supposedly protecting never cross the border. They would get the so-called benefit while paying none of the costs.