True, increasing the gasoline tax will curb a certain amount of non-essential consumption.  However, let us not be naive and expect the federal government to do anything useful with this increased revenue. It will never get spent on alternative energy because several hundred pork barrel projects will take first priority. In the chummy atmosphere of Congress, the operative principle is: You vote for my useless pork-barrel project, and I'll vote for yours. The result is useless pork-barrel projects all around.

I agree that it is a good thing to try to curb gasoline consumption, but I am loathe to make the federal government richer and more powerful in the process.

If the government must be involved, I think that cash incentives for things like hybrid cars, solar energy, and other energy-saving measures are preferable to an increased gas tax. These incentives would take money out of the bloated federal government instead of putting more money into it.  

It makes me sick when I think about what could have been done with just 10 percent of the $300 billion price tag for Bush's Iraq fiasco. The priorities of our rulers does not give me confidence in the future.

As I said in a previous post, the true price of gasoline must include some significant fraction of our $400 billion annual defense budget, as part of that can be attributed directly and indirectly to maintaining a massive military presence in the Middle East.