Rep. Blumenauer: Highway Bill Consists of ‘Collection of Budget Gimmicks’
Congress’ passage of its first five-year transportation bill in a decade, while significant, failed to ensure the long-term stability of a key highway account, said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), the leading advocate on Capitol Hill for raising federal fuel taxes to pay for infrastructure projects.
“Congress continues to refuse to address a Highway Trust Fund that is inadequate and losing purchasing power by the month. Refusing to increase the gas tax for 22 years or to have any other source of revenue has complicated passage of a long-term bill,” Blumenauer said Dec. 3 as the Senate prepared to clear the reauthorizing legislation for President Obama.
Blumenauer added that the highway bill’s “collection of budget gimmicks … are, in many cases, questionable.”
When they stitched together the legislation, transportation policymakers refused to consider a proposal Blumenauer pushed calling for raising fuel taxes to back the trust fund, the account used to help states finance infrastructure projects. Policymakers instead opted to partly back the bill with nontraditional sources of funding, such as relying on a Federal Reserve surplus account and selling units at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
A cadre of transportation groups, including American Trucking Associations, encouraged congressional transportation leaders to raise taxes on diesel fuel and gasoline to ensure the trust fund’s solvency in the coming years.
With the trust fund’s authority expiring Dec. 4, the White House indicated Obama will sign the highway bill into law shortly.
