I-80 Tolling: Continuing to Beat the Dead Horse

Written by Roberta Biros

Please pinch me. Grab a little chunk of flesh on my forearm and pinch it REALLY HARD. Do what ever you can to wake me from this horrible nightmare? Tell me that it is all a dream and that "no one actually shot JR".

What am I referring to? Well, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, some brilliant bureaucrat in Pittsburgh (Joseph Kirk, executive director of the Mon Valley Progress Council) wants to submit the I-80 tolling plan to the Federal Highway Administration ONE MORE TIME . . . for good measure . . . read the full story HERE.

Stupid politicians in Harrisburg are still struggling with the hole that was left in the budget when the I-80 tolling project was turned down last month [READ HERE], and they are considering EVERYTHING that could possibly raise money. According to the article, "Legislators are suggesting other solutions: tolling Interstate 79 or Interstate 95, legalizing video gambling machines, enabling private companies to lease highways and charge tolls, contracting out highway maintenance, or raising the wholesale gas tax."

I'm sorry, but has anyone considered the possibility of CUTTING SPENDING as a way to make ends meet? NOOOOOOOOOOO. Instead, let's just keep putting through a proposal to toll I-80 and THEN continue to write the money into the budget (as though it is already approved). All this so that we can move along in an effort to quickly pass a useless, garbage budget before things ramp up for the November election.

In the words of Mike Kelly (candidate for Congress), "I'm sorry if I come off as ANGRY, but I am ANGRY". State legislators need to sit their rear ends down in Harrisburg and start cutting meat out of this budget and it better start soon. I'm not talking any whimpy thin sliced pork chops kind of meat . . . I'm talkin' big old thick porterhouse steaks kinds of meat . . . if you know what I mean.

Give it up already. I-80 is NOT an option. Find some other dead horse to beat for a while.

As always, just my opinion.

~Mercer County Conservatives