Editorial: Consensus on Freight

In these days of diminished expectations in our federal government, we should surely be happy to find that a bipartisan House panel has managed to find unanimity on at least one topic of interest to us: that the nation’s freight system is vital to the future well-being of the country.

The panel, created to provide an overall game plan for the myriad issues facing the freight-distribution sector, last week called for Congress to create a formal national policy covering freight and to designate a national freight network that encompasses all modes of transport.

That’s the good news.

We believe that freight is indeed the lifeblood of our economy, and it’s nice to see Congress actually recognize it.

But this panel isn’t the first to recognize the issues and to make similar recommendations. It was just a few years ago that a blue-ribbon panel of experts came to similar conclusions and made similar recommendations.

That commission also actually proposed some ways that its recommendations could be paid for. And that, of course, led to the quick shelving of the report.

The latest group — created by Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — shied away from discussing funding solutions.

“I think you would have difficulty in raising taxes right at this time,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.), said when the report was released.

We continue to believe that raising federal fuel taxes is the best way to find the money to improve our infrastructure, but Congress and the White House continue to balk.

We certainly can understand that finding revenue to pay for the plan the panel put forward would have led to serious dissension, but without funding, the chances of these ideas being implemented are very, very slim.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, put a positive spin on the effort: “There’s a total consensus that we have to have robust funding and more revenues for freight transportation . . . across the board: Republicans, Democrats, all the different stakeholders.”

We’re certainly heartened by these words, but by the time Congress gets serious about weighing legislation to replace MAP-21 to fund our highway spending, there has to be some consensus on Capitol Hill on how to pay for these infrastructure improvements.

Otherwise, the only thing Congress is doing about infrastructure issues that are reducing the nation’s global competitiveness is indeed kicking the can down the road.