Graves Sees Lengthy Delay Before Highway Bill Passes

This story appears in the July 19 print edition of Transport Topics.

American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said he does not believe there will be any congressional action on a new long-term highway bill until at least 2011 — and possibly not until after the next presidential election.

In a July 9 interview with Transport Topics, Graves warned the delay could spur more states to re-examine tolling and public-private partnerships to solve their transportation funding shortfalls, which could damage the federal highway program.

“I just simply don’t see a scenario where there’s a vote on the floor of the House and the Senate and a signature by a president that’s going to infuse a significant amount of new money into road and bridge construction,” Graves said.

“There are no champions who have the ability to move a majority of those in the House and the Senate and at the White House to get a reauthorization bill done,” he added.

Graves predicted there would be another extension of the current highway law the end of the year. It originally expired on Sept. 30, but it already has been extended until the end of 2010.

He said that part of the current dilemma is that Republicans remain opposed to any tax or fee increase, while Democrats “fully appreciate how much political jeopardy” they are in ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Graves said he is concerned that if Republicans are successful in November, it will “reinforce the idea that being against tax increases and fee increases is where people want you to be.” At the same time, that also could convince Democrats that being for an increase in the fuel tax “is probably the wrong political place to be.”

He also noted it was ironic that Republicans are so opposed to an increase in the fuel tax, because President Reagan proposed such an increase during the 1980s.

Reagan is “held out as the shining example of Republican leadership, but that one element of Reagan’s philosophy is not to be embraced by the Republican party,” said Graves, a former two-term Republican governor of Kansas.

Without federal funding or a clear federal transportation policy, states will likely take it upon themselves to fund their own needs and it “will not necessarily be what ATA would like to see,” Graves said.

States taking their own funding actions can create “a patchwork quilt system of roads and bridges in our country, and that’s not good for interstate commerce,” he said. “There are governors who would simply view it as a way of developing an economic and competitive advantage over other states by being able to tout a more robust and developed infrastructure system.”

In the long term, Graves said this could hurt the prospects for a strong federal transportation policy.

“If you’re a member in the House or the Senate from a state that’s gone ahead and bitten the bullet . . . why would you be motivated to come to Washington and cast a vote to find some additional revenue stream when your folks at home have already anted up?” he asked.