Rep. Peter DeFazio Favors Passing Temporary Funding Bill in March
WASHINGTON — Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he believes Congress cannot deliver a new transportation funding bill by the end of May and should pass a temporary funding extension as soon as possible.
“We should do it by mid-March,” DeFazio said after addressing a gathering of state transportation officials here Feb. 26. “States start heavily committing themselves to the summer construction program in March and if there is uncertainty . . . it’s likely they will cancel or postpone projects,” he said.
The current funding bill, MAP-21, was extended last summer by Congress as the Highway Trust Fund sat on the edge of insolvency. However, that temporary measure expires May 31 and a deeply divided Congress has not been able to agree on how the nation will pay for transportation going forward.
DeFazio told the annual Washington gathering of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that he is not “locked into” any one funding mechanism, although he has proposed indexing the fuel tax and adopting a barrel tax on oil production to pay for transportation.
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DeFazio decried the United States’ lack of investment in transportation infrastructure relative to other countries, saying the U.S. investment is about 1% of gross national product, while other nations are investing as much as 9%.
“Try and find any other major industrial country that’s putting in as little as 1% and you get an idea of what’s going on here,” he told the state officials. “We just need to change the mind-set; this is investment . . . it’s about moving goods and people efficiently in this country."
