More on Charging for Crossing the Border

The Bellingham Herald had a story the other day about Obama's suggestion in his proposed budget that The Ever-Congenial Congress consider whether it might not make sense to charge people crossing the border (Northern? Southern?) for the privilege of entering the U.S.  Which would, of course, require the Northern?Southern? country on the other side of said border to fight back with their own charges for people crossing the border.  Which would mean, for those of us in P.R., two charges for going to Tsawwassen and four charges for going all the way to Blaine.  Time for a boat?

Then yesterday, I was told by a local that a Vancouver paper also had the story but it's take was that the U.S. was going to charge only Canadians for coming into our wonderful country.  Shucks, gosh!  Why not?  And that the charge would be $5.  Which would mean that Canada would counter-charge, that border traffic would slow even more while the border agents collect their $5's, and that we could pay each $10 extra to go to the doctor in Bellingham.

The APB has two pieces about this in the May edition: one, a letter, by Arthur Reber; and the second, an unsigned article.  Their take on details is slightly different, doubtless because it's just a suggestion in the budget for a study of the feasibility of the proposal.

Well, it's only been a suggestion and I doubt that the Ever-Congenial Congress is likely to rise to the idea, although it might get the Republican vote since they could raise taxes for non-Americans.  Though maybe they don't want anybody ever to pay more for the government.  God knows.  It's certainly, as Reber points out, an idea with enormous number of downsides: perhaps Rogoff and Reinhardt might conduct the study.