Funding Infrastructure Improvements
This Editorial appears in the Nov. 15 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
It just shouldn’t be this difficult. Here we are with virtually everyone involved agreeing that there is a major problem with the country’s aging infrastructure that needs to be addressed, and quickly.
Everyone seems to agree that there’s a crucial need to get more Americans working and that infrastructure construction projects are good sources of employment and can be spread to all regions of the country.
Everyone also agrees that there’s a troubling shortage of money with which to accomplish this work.
Add to this that the leading business organization that represents the nation’s trucking industry, American Trucking Associations, has been virtually begging Congress and the White House to raise fuel taxes to pay for this work, with the one major caveat that all the money raised by this new tax actually go for infrastructure improvements.
So why is this initiative still dead in the water?
Just last week, there were two more calls to raise fuel taxes to fund infrastructure projects.
First, U.S. Sens. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) called for a 25-cents-a-gallon increase in the fuel tax. They proposed using 15 cents to fund infrastructure and 10 cents to reduce federal debt.
While ATA happily supports the portion of the increase that would go toward transportation projects, it strongly rejects the bid to tie a fuel-tax jump to deficit reduction.
As ATA President Bill Graves said, “This is exactly the type of schizophrenic public policy that American voters rejected earlier this month. The ATA does not believe the motoring public should be saddled with the responsibility of solving the nation’s deficit dilemma.”
A few days after the Voinovich-Carper letter, the chairmen of the bipartisan panel that President Obama appointed to find ways to reduce the federal deficit proposed a 15-cent-a-gallon increase in fuel taxes to provide funding for transportation projects.
Despite all of these voices calling for increased fuel taxes to pay for driving-related improvements, the idea remains stalled, in large part because politicians these days are very reluctant to propose increasing taxes.
We believe that the case for finding a constructive way to update and expand our transportation infrastructure is worthwhile, and one that the voters would accept if our leaders were willing to spend the energy to explain it. What we need here is for Congress or the White House to step up and champion this worthwhile cause.
