Gas tax impact will be felt forever

Next time you fill up your car with gas you will be reminded that the recently enacted Illinois gas tax is now operational. To point out that a 100% increase, from 19 to 38 cents per gallon, is outrageous would be stating the obvious. What if the price of your weekly groceries or health products increased by 100%? Likely you would seek alternatives or cut back. Unfortunately, gasoline is a consumable item that few of us, especially working people, can do without or seek an alternative source.

Gov. Pritzker's rationale that the tax represents nothing more than the increase that would have been achieved if the tax had been inflation adjusted over the past two decades is an insult to our intelligence. This is nothing more than another revenue stream created on the backs of working people.

Promises of new jobs and improved infrastructure that might arise from this tax revenue ring hollow in a state where voters were once told that tollways would become freeways. Anyway, who needs new roads when you can't afford the fuel required for travel?

Had government been better fiscal stewards of our infrastructure over the past decades, it would not be allegedly crumbling and the concocted crisis of its condition could not be used to pressure sitting legislators into supporting such an extreme tax increase.

Remember that this tax increase is now a likely never-to-be-rescinded, permanent addition to the taxing fabric of our state and you will feel its impact daily. Unless you are willing to bear this impact in silence, it is suggested that you pump your state legislator's tank to the brim with your outrage.

Ronald Bearwald

Northbrook