Believe me, they could. Lately, however, it's become fashionable to question this. Various Republican leaders have trotted out the idea of a flat tax , meaning a fixed percentage of income tax levied on everyone. The rich should pay more taxes than the rest of us, because the rich get more from the government. The interstates and airports benefit interstate commerce and people who can travel, not ghetto dwellers.
Energy is used disproportionately by the rich and by industry.
As for public education, the better public schools are the ones attended by the moderately well off. The very well off, of course, ship their offspring off to private schools. If you don't think that's a benefit, go start up an engineering firm, or even a factory, in El Salvador. You'll soon find that low wages don't make up for uneducated workers. Beyond all this, the federal budget is top-heavy with corporate welfare .