A Republican lawmaker tries to explain why he voted for the gas tax

New Jersey 101.5 video

Here's a legislator who had the guts to come on the air Friday and defend his reasoning for voting in favor of raising the New Jersey gas tax. Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, a Republican from Monmouth County,  provided some insight into his thought process.

The gas tax, which was approved by the Legislature on Friday and is expected to be signed by Gov. Chris Christie, has proved to be monumentally unpopular with most New Jersey 101.5 readers and callers. But O'Scanlon thinks the citizens of New Jersey are missing the bigger picture.

"We don't have a $2 billion transportation issue; we have a $7 billion budget hole over the next few years that we won't be able to escape," he said Friday on the Deminski & Doyle show.

O'Scanlon admits that even he expects the worst in government most of the time, but when Jeff Deminski brought up the money from the Transportation Trust Fund being squandered, O'Scanlon said "most of the money was spent the way it was meant to be spent."

We must give credit where credit is due. It's not easy to defend something that a vast majority of the state is against, but O'Scanlon held his own. That being said, we think this gas tax hike is absolutely absurd.