Dear Max and Denny:

Thanks so much for giving Montana such good highways. Céline and I enjoy taking road trips to explore and photograph the state. The drive up Routes 287 and 89 along the Rocky Mountain Front is beautiful. We really appreciate the fine condition of Montana’s roads. I, particularly, am grateful since I moved here from New Orleans, where the roads are horrible.

But also, thanks so much for the excellent civics lesson. Many people don’t understand economics; fewer understand the ideas behind Public Choice theory, which applies economic principles to political behavior. Your stance on the federal highway bill provides a textbook example.

Federal funding for highways comes from a national gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon. This tax is the same in every state (although states may add their own tax on top of it). The money collected goes into a large pool (expected to be $230-$240 billion over the next six years). Spending it is a political process. Those who are politically well positioned tend to gain the most.

Denny, you sit on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. You announced recently that the committee had accepted your request for a pair of specific highway projects, worth $45 million, in addition to Montana’s share of the highway spending bill.

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Finance Committee decides how much of fuel tax revenues to spend. The Environment and Public Works Committee decides how the money is spent. Max, you are not only the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee, but also a senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

You recently extolled your legislative victories: “In 1998, I was fortunate enough to be one of only a handful of senators to help craft a new highway program that brought a huge, 60 percent increase of federal highway dollars home to Montana.... I helped boost Montana’s share of federal dollars from about $160 million every year for six years to more than $260 million every year. By the time the 1998 bill expires in March it will have pulled in more than $1 billion to Montana.

“The U.S. Senate is currently considering a new highway plan I helped write that will boost Montana’s share of highway dollars by an added $500 million -- bringing our total six-year share up to a whopping $2.2 billion.”

Max, you are understandably proud that “for every dollar we Montanans spend on gas taxes, we get more than $2 back from Uncle Sam.”

But where do these extra dollars come from? Surely they don’t just drop from the sky like manna. In fact, Montana’s rich Uncle Sam is the American driver.

For example, drivers in Michigan have long been net payers of highway funds. According to Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, “Between 1956 and 2001, Michigan ‘donated’ $1.71 billion to 46 other states and the District of Columbia for highway projects.”

And it’s not just all drivers. As economist Ronald Utt at the Heritage Foundation recently explained: “Because the fuel tax is one of the most regressive taxes levied by the federal government, the burden of [a proposed increase in the federal fuel tax] will fall disproportionately on those with modest incomes.” The poor tend to drive older, less fuel-efficient cars. They use more gas and so pay more in gas taxes. Thus, the poor working man in the Olds Ninety-Eight subsidizes roads for the rich yuppie in his Audi A6.

Max, you crow about the jobs such appropriated funds will “create.” This may be true for Montana, since we get back more than we pay out. But an old political adage has it that the most dangerous place in Washington is between a Congressman and asphalt. What about the jobs lost throughout the rest of the country? The hundreds of millions of dollars we receive every year is money our fellow Americans no longer have to spend where they want. Uncle Sam pays in double-sided coins. Every job he creates is a job lost in the private sector.

But not to worry, Max and Denny. As the playwright George Bernard Shaw put it, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”