Congress Criticizes Itself Over Lack of Highway Fix
This story appears in the May 11 print edition of Transport Topics.
WASHINGTON — Frustration among members from both sides of the aisle is intensifying with GOP leaders who have yet to unveil a funding patch for highway programs as a May 31 deadline fast approaches.
“This is kind of a joke that there’s not even a bill and we’re 26 days away,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said during a Subcommittee on Surface Transportation hearing May 5. “It’s clear to me that the only thing that they’re going to do is [a short-term] patch.”
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), chairwoman of the subcommittee, which is part of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that oversees truck safety policy, shared those concerns. She said she would back a short-term plan but noted the “time for action is now” on a long-term highway bill.
The subpanel’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, was more blunt: “This is no way to run a country.”
Even Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chamber’s top transportation policy writer, expressed disappointment with his Republican colleagues for continuing to delay a fix for the Highway Trust Fund. Inhofe said he would like them to unveil their plan — “the sooner the better.”
He also indicated that whatever patch GOP leaders present — a two-month or seven-month extension — would not include an increase for taxes on gas and diesel.
“There’s not going to be a user fee,” Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works panel, told Transport Topics. “It’s not on the table because the president said he’d veto anything with a user-fee increase, and [the] House said they won’t take up a bill if it has it. So between those two things, let’s not waste our time on something that isn’t going to happen.”
Earlier this year, Inhofe had indicated there was a possibility Congress would consider a user-fee increase.
“I don’t call it a tax increase. In fact, I’m not going to do that. It’s a user-fee increase,” Inhofe said in January.
Trucking leaders and other key transportation groups support an increase in fuel taxes — currently 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel.
Noting the time crunch to advance a highway-funding plan, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said an extension of highway programs was one of the “must-do items” before Congress leaves town for Memorial Day.
Talk of short-term patches has left stakeholders anxious about their abilities to pay for highway programs in their regions. The Transportation Construction Coalition, with members such as the American Road and Transportation Builders Association and the American Society of Civil Engineers, pressed lawmakers to adopt a long-term funding fix.
“Due to uncertainty about future federal funds, states have already delayed more than $1 billion in planned transportation projects that would have been part of this construction season,” the coalition wrote leaders of the House and Senate on May 6. “It is time to end the dubious claims that tax reform and another extension provide a clear path toward a long-term Highway Trust Fund solution.”
Nick Yaksich of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers added that the “cloud of uncertainty” regarding funding is damaging aspects of the construction sector.
Janet Kavinoky, executive director of transportation and infrastructure at the U.S. Chamber of Congress, shared her disappointment with lawmakers, as well.
“As everyone is painfully aware, the issue of sustainable, growing revenue for the federal Highway Trust Fund is central to” a highway bill reauthorization, she said. “It has been a topic of nonstop debate, discussion, and hand-wringing. It is time to stop talking and act. The stakes are high.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation uses the trust fund to help states finance big-ticket highway projects. Uncertainty at the federal level has prompted officials in Delaware, Tennessee and Arkansas to delay construction projects.
