They are looking for more revenue because people are driving less, and the gas tax isn't covering the unionized road repair guys as well. I've heard some of the discussion, and adding to the gas tax is considered politically impossible, so here come the back-door approaches.
Also, there are a small but growing number of guys like me who have electric cars and pay little to no gas tax. Not really enough numbers to matter much yet...but schemes to tax guys like me are being discussed all over. There's an online community, at least one per electric car type, and they track all this loudly and often. They are working from miles, electricity use, you name it, in various proposals. Now, since I'm solar, they'll have a little more trouble with that, and since I'm also an embedded programmer, I can probably make my odometer say whatever I want it to as well (but that's not legal).
Most know that most of the road damage isn't done by autos, it's done by trucks with big loads, in fact, the road damage is non-linear with weight - goes up faster than weight with big trucks, which is one reason why diesel already costs a lot more than gasoline, even though it's (usually) easier to refine from crude - simple distillation - road tax is higher for it - enough higher that the extra mileage a passenger vehicle gets on diesel doesn't make up for it, hence the low adoption rate in this country for diesel (among other things, like we don't get that nice low sulfur crude like Libya generates for Europe, and sulfur is hard to get out of heavy crude and keep only the heavy diesel fraction pure of it.) Which in turn was why NATO countries were all for getting into Libya...
In a way, you're right - it IS all a charade, and that is mostly about energy, and most of that has to do with oil. It's not about spreading democracy, it's about retaining petro-dollar status for the US.
Has been for awhile. Every one of these MENA wars we do is about that alone, and is a hidden subsidy to keep gasoline "cheap" - you pay the rest via other taxes. Now with so many not paying or not paying much due to other government regulatory failures making us all poor, the government feels entitled to the same money no matter how they screw it up - so here we are - they find another way to get it. And they have guns and stuff, so they can take it by force.
Not sure when they run out of other people's money...but they must think it's close, or wouldn't be printing so much new stuff to spend before it creates inflation.
And they know the banks still are insolvent, or FASB 157 would change back real quick, at the bank's insistence - by the first big bank that looked solvent under non mark-to-unicorn rules. Since there's no noise about that one from anywhere - that's the tell. They're all hosed, and the QE is just another back-door bailout for them.
For those not in the know (and I hope I got the number right) that FASB ruling means banks don't have to mark to market...was supposed to be really temporary...but we still have it. If we're really coming out of the woods, that ruling should go away, and the fact it hasn't and isn't even under discussion tells us the real driver is the banks and that they don't want the ruling set back.
Imagine how loud the clamor would be if one of the big banks looked good under the old rules - they'd want that rolled back quick for the competitive advantage vs the ones not looking so good.
So unless you think there's a conspiracy that some of the members are willing to lose money with - it tells me they're *all* insolvent when the papers are honestly marked.