Ie. a huge cut for New York, which pays less in gas taxes.

Income taxes? Payroll taxes? Not so much.

Transportation, through the ISTEA, NEXTEA and SAFTEA and/or SAFETEALU, whatever the acronym, is the only area of federal political economy where urban, populated, states recoup some of the enormous amount of money we transfer to the Federal Government in the form of income taxes and other fees.

This election has been, and continues to be, more about urban versus rural, city versus exurb, people versus property than any other.

Not for nothing it comes at a time when the last transportation bill has run out of gas. By next summer, regardless of who is in office, the transportation bill will have to be re-authorized. At that time the "donor states" (those who pay more in gas taxes than they receive in transportation bill transfers) will demand what they determine to be "equity".

I'm not a big fan of bi-partisanship, I like strong parties that know what they stand for, but the biggest victory New York has ever won through bi-partisanship was a result of the D'Amato(R)-Moynihan(D) tag team who really began the modern split of Federal money between mass transit and highways allowing for local flexibility in how the money was spent. Still, the money before that split was a function of population, not how much oil was burned up in the process.

The argument of the "donor states" really amounts to rewarding those states that burn more gas per capita with more federal money for highways so that they can burn more gas. Instead of "donor states" a more proper appellation would be "gas guzzling states". Their vision of the future rolls like a money pump. Build more roads, induce more driving, burn more gas, create more gas tax revenue, receive the revenue, build more roads, wash, rinse, repeat.

Obama has clearly shown that he knows better and that is why he has my vote. When he resisted anesthetizing the gas tax against both McCain and Clinton just before the NASCAR primaries (North Carolina and Indiana), then won NC and beat the point spread in Indiana, there was no turning back. He gave the electorate much more credit than I did, he was right.

In the end this is clearly a Federal issue as it involves and drives Interstate Commerce within the Constitutional structure. Transportation funding and planning is also clearly one of our chief economic disadvantages in international competition with Asia and Europe. Our labor markets have an extra layer of competition when it comes to transportation economies. Not only do we have to compete with Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Marseilles and Hamburg port economies but we also have to compete with other states and localities within the US. That will be amplified under a McCain Presidency.

Europe pays more in fuel taxes than the US pays for fuel. What that allows the Europeans are enormous resources for all sorts of economic endeavors. Except for the North Sea there is no European oil production at all. Anything they get from the East (Putin) is subject to taxes and a vig charged by the Russian Oligarchs.

The next Congress and Administration will have to decide how and when to access the economic value of fuel taxes. It will not be popular with most people who own cars (a majority). But in the context of a severe economic crisis, when other tax issues are in play, it can be done. But in the end it is an urban issue. Saving fuel is what cities do, that is what population density allows.

The Republicans are the party of the exurbs and rural areas. Lucky for them the Constitution favors those areas through Federalism and the Electoral College. Look at the electoral map. The map is even more severely divided by county. Low Federal fuel taxes (and ours are about the lowest in the world) encourage fuel consumption which demands more oil in the oil patch (Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska). Those states, despite their free enterprise ideology, simply take gas prices the rest of us pay and transfer it to their citizens in lower state taxes (and in the case of Alaska direct money transfers to citizens). Then they label it "free enterprise" and "fiscal conservatism". The oil patch states are really a combination of welfare state and OPEC. Like Yemen and Kuwait, they are oil pumps with flags.