Exactly what is the price of a tax?

For those who spent Black Friday battling the crowds and enduring long lines to get a great deal – perhaps $250 for another big-screen/flat-screen TV for your home – consider how that compares to the “purchases” you make with Uncle Sam.

That same $250 amount, paid in federal income taxes by a typical middle class family, finances for one year all these government programs combined: Customs and Border Protection, special education, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the entire Agricultural Department , the nation’s federal prosecutors, U.S. anti-terrorism and bioterrorism corps, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Park Service, child-support enforcement, National Weather Service, Consumer Product Safety Commission, freight railroad oversight, chemical and hazardous safety, Mine Safety and Health Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That’s quite a list. For $250. It’s based on tax calculations by Third Way, a centrist research group that demonstrated how a family with a $50,000 income pays their share of the cost of every government agency and program.

The point is not that the Washington bureaucracy is particularly cost-efficient or that the private sector is not effective at creating bargains for the consumer.

But at a time when Washington and Lansing grapple with major tax issues, lawmakers’ basic urge of self-preservation causes them to fear hyperventilating anti-tax groups and to bow to well-heeled lobbyists.

With oil prices plummeting in a volatile international market, 20-cent jumps in the price at the pump have become commonplace across Michigan. Yet, many taxpayers express staunch opposition to the gas tax increase under consideration in Lansing that would gradually add an estimated 17 cents per gallon over several years.

For that price, motorists would receive much-improved roads, highways and bridges – and lots of good jobs for the people who would build them. Sounds like a pretty good bargain. It’s also important to remember that the current gas tax has not been increased since 1997. It’s remained at the same price (not a percentage) per gallon for 17 years.

How rare is that? Who wouldn’t like to pay 1997 prices for gadgets or clothes or gasoline? Except in this case, the underlying price is a pothole-filled road system and creaky bridges.

One aspect of the road funding debate that appears to be losing steam in the Legislature is the fact that a gas tax is a highly regressive tax. Gas takes a much bigger bite out of a low-income family’s household budget than the relatively minor expense it represents for the upper-income folks.

Attempts to tie the fuel tax to an enriched Earned Income Tax Credit – a return to previous levels – may be headed down a dead end. The EITC helps the working poor, a group that has no lobbyists in Lansing.

In Washington, Congress haphazardly grapples with 62 tax deductions that will expire at the end of the year. Some will be made permanent, some will be extended, and some may die. In too many cases, the “tax extenders” that survive, especially those granted Capitol Hill’s version of everlasting life, are those that benefit well-connected corporations. Those companies collectively field an army of lobbyists who hand out lots of campaign cash to lawmakers.

Meanwhile, efforts to make permanent the Child Tax Credit (once a Republican favorite) and the federal EITC flounder.
 Other basic tax breaks hanging in the balance:

• A $4,000 deduction of college expenses for middle-income families

• A $250 deduction awarded to beleaguered school teachers for classroom supplies

• A deduction for companies, farms and restaurants that donate food to charities

On another front, Congress makes moves toward repealing the medical device tax, which helps fund Obamacare. The 2.3 percent tax on medical supplies is spread evenly across all companies but the device industry is so intent on killing the new levy that they have reportedly spent $150 million over five years lobbying against it.

$150 million. That’s quite a price to eliminate a relatively small tax. Of course, everything in Washington is relative. Killing the tax will put a $30 billion hole in the federal budget over a decade.

While industry lobbyists claim catastrophic consequences due to the new levy – propaganda that’s parroted by senators receiving tens of thousands of dollars for their campaign war chests – the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded that the effect on industry jobs and output would be less than 0.2 percent.

This is pure power politics, and the corporations can afford to play the game. In 2010, the medical device industry gave a majority of their campaign contributions to Democrats. This year, as it became clear that the Republicans would likely gain control on Capitol Hill, the industry switched allegiance to the GOP.

This political gamesmanship is also at play in the tussle over the 62 tax extenders. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out that Congress may grant permanent status to high-priced corporate credits and deductions that dwarf the prosed device tax repeal.

At a combined 10-year cost of $312 billion, the CBPP reports, the nine largest extender provisions that the House Ways and Means Committee has passed are not paid for with any offsets to the budget. They would wipe out 40 percent of the revenue raised by the 2012 “fiscal cliff” legislation. The full House has already granted seven, costing $235 billion.

For the rest of us, this kind of trickle-down budgeting may mean that the price of basic services, such as border protection and federal prosecutors and the National Park Service, may be going up. For us, what’s going on in Washington is surely not a bargain.