Of course adding tax to fuel is a liberal idea. All liberals love to add taxes to everything. Personally, I too am abhorrent of additional taxes. However, there needs to be something done to reduce the total amount of fuel consumed in this country. The Prius and other hybrids are excellent examples of vehicles that will offer the fuel economy needed to accomplish this. However, I do not see 20,000 hybrids making any dent in the procurement of SUV's. Each successive year sees additional sales of these fuel wasting vehicles.

Clearly, when a vehicle gets 12-17 mpg and when it is selling like hotcakes, there must be a conclusion that most people do not have a problem filling it up with fuel. Therein lies the problem. If the cost of a gallon of gasoline was $3.00, there absolutely would be less demand for these vehicles. The advent of the hybrid is not going to put a dent in the sales of the SUV. Only higher gasoline prices will accomplish this.

The fundamental premise of the discussion is that the country consumes too much fuel and that the government should do something about it because the consumption is increasing. The advent of the hybrid or the TDI diesel is not going to change this fact in any way.

For those who refuse to accept additional tax on gasoline, or anything else for that matter, because of the argument that the government will simply waste the money (true), please provide an alternative to reduce the fuel consumption in this country.
The only other way to do it is to mandate the auto manufacturers to hit MPG targets that are successively higher. This was very successful for passenger cars and has resulted in the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) reaching 27.5 mpg. Unfortunately, SUV's fall into the category of trucks and there are no current requirements on the manufacturers for a CAFE on these vehicles.