Log In


Reset Password
Opinion Editorial Cartoons Op-Ed Editorials Letters to the Editor

Funding highways

Congress should get serious about financing

Even the most casual observer of Congress’ behavior can point to numerous examples of issues that Congress is neglecting to deal with while it practices an overwhelming amount of partisanship. One of the most obvious is its failure to replenish the fast-declining balance in the federal Highway Trust Fund, money that makes highway construction across the country possible.

The fund was originally designed to be largely supported by a federal tax on gasoline. But while construction costs and needs have climbed since 1993 – the most recent year the per-gallon tax was increased – all Congress has done is add general funds to the mix. That was easier politically than increasing the per-gallon tax.

To its credit, Congress did reauthorize highway funding for multi-year periods and add to the funding needed.

But, that was then. More recently, perhaps in hopes of some party political advantage, Congress has continued the funding authorization for time periods of less than a year.

That has made construction planning uncertain and added to costs.

Early in August, the construction fund will drop below $4 billion, a level that, between the timing of incoming-tax revenue and outgoing construction costs, is about what is needed to cover cash flow.

By the end of that month, the fund level will be depleted. Then, at the end of September, the authority to fund highway construction comes to an end.

What to do? Rather than strengthening the link between highway use and necessary construction funding, members of both parties are proposing wildly unrelated sources of funds. Applying some of the taxes to highways that corporations will owe when they bring their profits earned overseas into the U.S. is one. Another, equally detached, is to allow corporations to be able to budget their pension plans with estimated interest-revenue levels higher than rates are today and apply some of the difference to highways. That extra income earned by a pension fund, on paper, will permit corporations to provide less cash funding. The problem is obvious: If interest-rate levels remain low for an extended period (and they have already remained low much longer than economists expected), pension funds will not earn the income that was budgeted. A risky proposal.

A third is to simply borrow the necessary billions for construction while interest rates are low. But that puts even more money into the economy, some day to be dealt with.

There are plenty of federal projects that may be questionable depending on priorities and ideologies, but not highways. Highways are the infrastructure that the economy depends on, and they permit the extraordinary mobility that Americans enjoy. Highway construction also provides well-paying jobs.

Congress should extend the Highway Trust Fund authorization now, not at the end of September, and it should fund it at the needed level. And at the same time, members of both parties should join to raise the gas tax in multiple steps to much more closely match highway construction needs. Automobiles and trucks, in general, get much better gas mileage than they did in 1993, and drivers today have multiple choices to save even more fuel with gas-electric hybrids and diesels.

Here is an opportunity for Congress to surprise Americans with majority party votes that put the country’s needed highway work on proper financial footing, and end the wild one-time unrelated funding proposals that make little sense.

When candidates for the House and the Senate in the November elections are within reach, ask them what they will do to provide highway funding. Voters deserve a direct answer.



Reader Comments