Obama's new budget means airfares will be going up

One little-noted aspect of Obama's budget is that it calls for an as-yet-unspecified increase in government fees for commercial airline tickets starting in 2012.

The administration says that right now, only 36% of security costs are being covered by that $2.50-per-flight surcharge that Bush put into place in 2002; last year, that fee brought in $2 billion toward defraying the operation of the Transportation Security Administration. The rest is coming from other government sources, which means they're coming from other tax sources.

The Obama team hasn't yet specified how much they want to raise the fee, but assuming that $2.50 is 36% of the cost of security, if they plan to raise enough cash to cover 100%, we'll be paying close to $10 per flight.