>SNIP
>
>>Alternately, they could start paying car taxes as cars of that size would.
>
>Now THAT is a great idea!

But that's exactly what made them popular - AFAIK, the Congress exempted these private tanks from some taxes as an incentive to ease the survival growth of auto industry, which in turn helped the big oil by saturating the roads with oil guzzlers. Reverting this would be an outright confession that they screwed up from the beginning.