In electing President Bush, voters thought they were getting a tax-cutter, not a tax-raiser. So it comes as a surprise to learn that the federal budget Mr. Bush proposed this week includes a 120% increase in a federal tax on airplane tickets – to $5.50 from $2.50 for a one-way, non-stop flight.

The Bush budget describes this as a “user fee” that covers the cost of federal security at airports. But it is illogical to place the entire cost of airport security on ticket-buying passengers. After all, a hijacked plane can be a threat to the security of all Americans, as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, showed.

Advocacy groups are mobilizing to fight the tax increase. The president of the Air Transport Association, the airlines trade group, James May, issued a statement saying, “Any new tax or fee raises ticket prices and the cost of airlines doing business. Under this budget proposal, U.S. airlines appear to be the only business in America that the administration has chosen to tax back to economic health. We fail to understand how this proposed tax squares with past administration policies that have cut taxes and successfully spurred economic growth.”

Mr. May warned that increasing taxes on airlines and travelers “will jeopardize airline jobs as well as local air service to small- and medium-size communities.” The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, issued a press release condemning what his organization called a “plan to sock taxpayers with a massive tax increase to fly domestically.”

The airline industry has been going through a rough patch, with several of the major carriers either emerging from bankruptcy or on the brink of it. The industry is already taxed heavily, with the government typically adding taxes and fees of $40 or $60 to a $250 roundtrip fare. Here’s hoping the Republicans in Congress ground this presidential proposal before it takes wing.