Is infrastructure the new battle cry for increased taxes? The liberals have global warming as a key arrow in their quiver to raise taxes and to institute regulations. And now, Republicans have decided they, too, need their own arrow, and it just might be infrastructure. They think raising taxes for infrastructure improvements is an innocuous approach for the exercise. It’s always the easiest solution, isn’t it? They seem to think it is. We know Republicans don’t really believe in all the smaller government/less spending blather they’ve espoused for years. Granted, Republicans serving in our state Legislature are far better at managing a budget than are the Republicans serving in Washington, but that’s quite a low bar. We’re disappointed our legislators have started to embrace an increase in our gasoline tax before actually debating it; they seem in absolute pain to raise those fees. Just wait; if it happens, some of those dollars will go toward funding mass transit, to which, you might know, we are opposed to for our region. The larger question becomes this: Why is the General Assembly not negotiating with Washington? Of every gas tax dollar sent to Washington’s “highway account,” Indiana is returned 92 cents. Can we get someone in the Statehouse fighting for the rest of us? Or maybe use the state’s surplus (yes, we have been over-taxed) to fly Trump here on Air Force One to negotiate the deal … in about 15 minutes? We think it’s high time legislators actually prioritize the spending of our tax dollars. Maybe they need to come to all of us and say we can have infrastructure spending or we can have early childhood education, but we can’t have both.