Democrats, Republicans Each Claim Credit for Highway Law in Official Party Platforms

This story appears in the Sept. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

During their recent presidential nominating conventions, Republicans and Democrats both took credit in their official party platforms for the two-year transportation reauthorization bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in July.

However, while the Democratic platform emphasized the “long-term infrastructure investment” contained in the measure because they said it will create jobs, the Republican platform praised the law’s “return to federalism.”

The Republicans said in their platform document that the law gives states more flexibility in spending federal money and speeds up the approval process on transportation projects.

Platforms typically are a list of the actions a political party supports in its effort to appeal to the general public.

The Republican platform also is strongly opposed to a vehicle-miles-traveled tax to pay for projects.

“We oppose any funding mechanism that would involve governmental monitoring of every car and truck in the nation,” the platform said.

The Democratic platform does not mention a VMT, but does call for a national infrastructure bank to help fund projects. Conversely, the Republican platform calls for public-private partnerships to help build and operate roads, bridges, tunnels and transit systems.

As they did during the recent reauthorization debate, in their platform Republicans tied transportation funding to energy policy. They expressed support for new oil drilling offshore and in the arctic wilderness and also supported building the Keystone XL pipeline to carry crude oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries.

The Democratic platform stressed government support for investments in “clean energy,” and said the party has “made protecting the environment a top priority” offshore and in the Arctic.

The Democratic platform also said the party supports development of biofuels, “greater use of natural gas in transportation” and “more infrastructure investment to speed the transition to cleaner fuels in the transportation sector.”

President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — along with several Republicans in the House and Senate — have sought billions of dollars in tax credits for those who build natural-gas filling stations and manufacture and buy trucks powered by natural gas (11-14, p. 4).

The Republican platform, however, said, “We will not pick winners and losers in the energy marketplace” and “will let the free market and the public’s preferences determine the industry outcomes.”

“What’s sad is [the platforms] clearly state that both parties are going to continue along the lines that they have with the policies that they’ve stated and aren’t really moving in any particular interesting direction,” Joshua Schank, president of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington think tank, told Transport Topics.

The Republicans are calling for “cuts around the edges” in programs their constituents don’t like such as passenger rail, but they don’t address big transportation issues such as funding methods, Schank said.

The Democratic platform, meanwhile, called for more investment in all modes, but did not suggest a way to pay for that, Schank said.

Neither party platform addressed the suggestion of the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission that the nation should raise fuel taxes to pay for transportation, Schank added.