It's amazing how messed up some of our laws and law-making is.
Just a few years ago a small tax came off of peoples phone service bills. It was a tax imposed to pay for the Spanish-American War! Things like that are one of the reasons they have a hard time getting people to vote for taxes to pay for certain things... because they know the money will get shuffled off elsewhere and the tax will remain in place far to long. People ranted and raved about the old stadium here in Seattle (the Kingdome) not even being paid for when it was brought down to make a new one. The reason is because they'd constantly funneled money away from the tax that was created to pay for it. What they need to do is, in the legalities of the tax, say that once the tax raises X amount of dollars it expires.
A friend and I once joked about driving around in the fog in Seattle with one of us on the hood of the car holding a lantern... why? Because, guess what, there's still a law on the books that says you have to!