Does anyone remember what happened to the last candidate who promised to raise your taxes?

"Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."

With that statement at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, former Vice President Walter Mondale set the stage for the worst electoral defeat for any Democratic Party presidential candidate in history, winning only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota - barely. The lesson learned was that people don't want their taxes raised so if you plan to do it, don't tell them.

Maryland Senate president Thomas V. "Mike" Miller apparently didn't get the memo, or he's so supremely confident of victory in the 2010 election that he believes he can say anything and still get elected (in the interest of full disclosure, I am filing on July 6, 2009 to run as a Republican for the Maryland Senate seat currently held by Senator Miller). He told a Frederick Chamber of Commerce audience today that if re-elected, he intends to push for an increase in the gas tax. 

Miller has advocated raising the gas tax for some time now as a way to replenish the transportation trust fund. The fact he's continuing to push for it as an election year approaches, and the word "tax" is an expletive given the double whammy Marylanders are getting from the federal government and the one-party monopoly in Annapolis, shows he's got a lot of chutzpah.

Why would he propose another tax when he's already inflicted upon us the largest tax increase in the state's history? He was the one clamoring for the special session in which taxes were raised $1.4 billion dollars. He is the one who shot down the Republican alternatives that would have balanced the budget without raising taxes. He and his allies, Governor Martin O'Malley and Maryland House speaker Mike Busch, are the ones who've pushed Maryland into the top tier of high-tax, high-cost, anti-business states.

It's certainly true that a lot of state transportation projects are treading water, and that is his primary justification for a gas tax. I can think of many reasons, however, why an increase in the gas tax would be devastating to young people, working families and seniors in Maryland:

1) It hits commuters hard. According to one recent demographic study, 61% of all residents of Calvert County work outside the county, primarily in the Washington, DC Metro area to the north or the Patuxent River Naval Air Station to the south. An increase in the gas tax would have a disproportionate impact on the people in Miller's home county and other Marylanders in rural areas who have to drive to get anywhere.

2) It makes everything more expensive. Gas taxes don't just make it more expensive to fill up at the pump. One basic law of economics that liberals and Democrats never learned is that the little guy always ends up paying the price for higher taxes, even the ones on the rich favored by the purveyors of class warfare and success envy. If a business pays more in taxes, they recoup the additional expense by increasing prices on the goods or services they offer. In the case of a gas tax, anything that gets transported, namely just about everything, will be subject to price increases because it costs more to move things around.

3) It won't stay in the trust fund. Trust funds in government are a joke. We all know by now that trust funds are accounting mirages set up for show and that, in fact, money can be taken out of trust funds at will to pay for other things or to make the books look better. Our elected officials in Annapolis have raided the transportation trust fund to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year to replenish the general fund and balance the budget. Not surprisingly, only tens of millions of dollars ever find their way back into the fund.

4) Taxes aren't the only solution. Senator Miller mocked fellow Senator Alex Mooney, a Republican and signer of the "no taxes" pledge, implying it's more courageous and responsible to propose a tax increase. Since when has it been considered politically courageous to take and spend other people's money? 

It takes a lot more courage to admit that Annapolis spends too much and doesn't get a commensurate return on its investment. Courage would be holding the recipients of public funds accountable for results or they're done. Courage would be putting the people first.

So let me say this as nicely as I can: it's not your money. Hands off.