Hidden in the Obama Budget is the High-Speed Rail Tax: 62% Spending Increase for Department of Transportation

There are lots of items in the Obama budget that deserve a "what the?". Obama is proposing large spending increases for the Department of Energy and Education, to bureaucracies that need to go, of 9.5 percent. His total budget increases government spending by a whopping 11 percent in 2012, but that's not even the story.

The story is Obama has proposed a massive 62% spending increase in the Department of Transportation. Obviously high-speed rail, which was supposed to get lots of stimulus funding, didn't get enough, and now Americans will watch this money pit produce more federal debt. Here's the other half of the story.

Obama is going to push for a large tax increase to fund this high-speed rail that even some liberals don't want, like I have written about in California. Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) noted the new Obama 2012 budget calls for an unspecified tax of $435 billion to pay for the new $556 billion infrastructure push. While it doesn't specify high-speed rail, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what Obama is up to.

“I just have to say that is unrealistic,” Sessions said. “If you can’t tell us what kind of tax this is, I think there is zero chance of us passing such a tax as this.

“This is another huge gimmick in the budget,” Sessions said later. “This kind of Washington logic has put us in the financial crisis we are in. We cannot continue it. We cannot continue to authorize spending based on a tax that is not going to be collected, probably.”

There is something else driving this tax? With gas prices going up, the federal government knows you will be driving less, which means a decrease in federal fuel taxes. So rather than solve the high oil prices by increasing American output of oil, Obama is simply going to take more money from you--as if you aren't being hit from all corners right now.