There they go again - Dept. of Transportation funding bill would require states to impose new taxes to meet non-federal share of mass transportation projects

National Review, Oct 1, 1990

BY MODESTLY constraining their access to the fruits of America's productive classes, the Reagan Revolution has provoked a variety of creative responses on the part of Washington's tax-spending multitudes. These have included user fees, legislative mandates upon the private sector, and judicially imposed tax increases. The latest innovation is to make federal grants to the states conditional upon their agreeing to raise taxes. Admittedly, the legislative vehicle for this wondrous new tactic, as with every congressional foot-in-the-door, is extremely narrowly drawn. A provision of a Department of Transportation appropriation bill, no more, would require that the most populous states, as a condition for receiving federal mass-transportation dollars, impose new taxes earmarked to fund the non-federal share of such programs. The states then could shift dollars from current masstransportation funding to other spending needs."

Such conditions are not, truth be told, altogether different from other conditions that Congress has more traditionally imposed: highway-beautification or -safety programs, for example, as a quid pro quo for federal highway-construction grants. The Supreme Court has found such conditions permissible so long as they are reasonably related to the objectives of the federal assistance.

It is the sheer explicitness of it here that is breathtaking-the Federal Government telling the states that they will receive more of John Q. Public's federal tax dollars only if they are willing to soak him for more state tax dollars. This doesn't sound like a very good deal for Mr. Public. Putting aside concerns about American federalism-which are no longer of much interest to either national or state governments-this latest ploy by Congress is yet another means of ensuring that caps on income-tax rates not cramp the style of Washington's spenders. We have not seen the last of this device.