Editorial: Highway Bill Ahead
This Editorial appears in the Nov. 30 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Rolling into the year’s final month, we are pleased to observe that Congress appears to be actually making progress on a multiyear surface transportation plan. Based on what key House and Senate members are saying, a real six-year plan is probable, not pie in the sky.
This is something that many in trucking have campaigned for continuously when Congress could do little more than put together a string of patches since SAFETEA-LU expired at the end of September 2009. MAP-21 was the most serious fix, running from 2012 to 2014.
Congratulations and good wishes to the congressional quartet of Shuster, Inhofe, DeFazio and Boxer on actually finishing the task, especially since there is so much yet to be tied up. And that is why we are slightly dyspeptic, even in the face of progress.
Six years is a fine term for a spending plan and consistent with past actions, but Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is saying the amounts to be authorized are not high enough.
We certainly would welcome transportation taking its place as a national priority but would settle for what Congress is proposing — as long as the plan is actually funded. The fact that just three years of revenue is propping up a six-year spending plan is genuinely worrisome.
Even more troubling is the Rube Goldberg nature of the funding. Selling off a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when world oil prices are low is a poor idea, almost as peculiar as pension smoothing, which was the basis of a recent patch. Then there have been discussions about using Federal Reserve System fees.
Congressional tax writers should do the obvious, sensible thing and use transportation-related taxes and fees to fund the nation’s transportation network: That means diesel and gasoline taxes should be higher, first and foremost, but talking about other transportation levies as a way to supplement fuel taxes makes more sense than the check-between-the-couch-cushions approach now under consideration.
Then there are the hotly debated policy issues: CSA scoring reform, twin 33-foot trailers and experimentation with interstate commercial licenses for younger drivers.
We like all of these and urge senators and representatives to keep them in a conference report to be sent to President Obama’s desk.
It is during the final sprint to completion, though, that the legislative process should get the closest scrutiny.
