CNN: Time for a Gas Tax Hike

For the MSM, it’s always time for a gas tax hike; CNN joins the NYT, WaPo, and NBC’s Tom Brokaw in calling for one.

As Warner Todd Huston writes today at Big Journalism:

[CNN’s Steve Hargreaves] mentions the other proposals to raise the gas tax, of course, but all this has been a continuing discussion, one going on for years, and has no connection specifically to the fiscal cliff talks or even the reason we got here… except for one thing—spending cuts.

Every “solution” this article presents is but one form or another of raising taxes. Not once is there a mention of cutting spending.

The truth is that Washington doesn’t have a tax problem. The annual federal deficit is over $1 trillion, and no new tax will raise this amount of additional revenue—merely stopping the addition of new debt—each year. Washington has a spending problem, and unless cuts in spending become part of the fiscal cliff talks, there aren’t any serious “solutions” in the offing.

File this one away for the next time gas prices rice and CNN pretends to be sympathetic to consumers in response by cranking out a boilerplate “Why are prices so expensive at the pump” story. They wouldn’t be the first to be “two networks in one” when it comes to being for/gainst high gas prices — taking their cue from the president’s own schizophrenia on the topic.