Durned If You Do...

So let me get this straight. You are horrified by the high gas prices you're seeing every time you pass the local Citgo. So you make a few changes. You buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle, maybe even a hybrid. And then you cut back on your driving - you make all your trips at one time, you carpool to the office, you decide not to take a summer vacation. You even drive slower so you're not burning as much fuel. It's all to save your family money.

After a winter of driving over more potholes than you'd expect to see craters on the moon, you know MDOT and other road fixing folks get 19 cents per every gallon of gas sold - it's tax money. And you also know they rely on that money to fix the roads and bridges, because Michigan gets 92 cents of every dollar it sends to Washington, back for road repair and similar projects, making Michigan a 'donor state.'

Then you hear MDOT and friends say say, Gee, we're not getting nearly as much money from drivers because they're driving less and driving hybrids or more fuel-efficient cars, so they're not buying as much gasoline, and that means less gas tax money for us. But we really need money to fix those roads, otherwise you're going to run the risk of the Minnesota bridge disaster. So we need you to raise the tax on a gallon of gasoline to 28 cents on the gallon or more.

This article lays out all the facts and figures pretty well.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080612/METRO05/806120380

Without doing a lot of fancy math, aren't you pretty much screwed either way?? You make the effort to be a more responsible citizen behind the wheel to save yourself money, and in the end, you're still going to pay out of pocket when gas prices go up yet again - only this time, it's tax money to pay for crumbling roads, which could be better funded by the federal government, if it would give Michigan a dollar in road money for every dollar it sends to Washington (and no, I don't really get how that works either). In short, no matter what you do to save money, it's going to be wrestled out of your pockets one way or another.

Does this make even the LEAST bit of sense to anyone else??