Enough already
Are you tired of hearing about the highway bill? I know I am. As Albert Einstein so famously put it, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that definition, Congress’ approach to funding highway infrastructure investment is truly insane.
After nine temporary extensions of funding that totaled 1,000 days of delay, Congress passed the last transportation funding reauthorization in the summer of 2012. And even after all that jockeying around for political advantage, it didn’t take a meaningful step towards solving the problem with a long-term solution. Instead of the five-year reauthorizations that had been the rule in past battles, Congress essentially kicked the can down the road with a two-year bill.
Worse, it was a status quo move that kept the fuel-tax funding mechanism for highway investment unchanged, which meant it failed to address the true problem of how to pay for years of deferred infrastructure maintenance and investment.
Now we’re at the end of that short-term reauthorization and right back where we started. And once again, Congress is offering Band-Aids to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent until it meanders its way to some kind of multi-year transportation bill.
As we enter August, both the House and Senate have prepared separate bills that would temporarily keep the trust from running out of funds. At least both Republicans and Democrats recognize that letting the money dry up would be political suicide, as that would essentially bring all road construction to a halt and cause a massive jump in unemployment just as we enter election season.
However, how long that temporary funding would last was still up in the air. Some legislators are pushing for an extension until May 2015 when the next Congress is seated, and others are lobbying for a December 2014 deadline in the hopes that a lame-duck Congress will have more luck reaching a compromise.
There are a lot of things that are frustrating about this recurring inability to meet an essential governmental responsibility. But the most frustrating is that both sides agree that our national infrastructure is in dire need of major investment. So why can’t they just get on with it and deal with the problem once and for all?
The simple answer is politics and money; too much of the first and not enough of the second. Both parties realize that control of the Senate is up for grabs in the November elections, so neither wants to do anything that might be turned to the other’s advantage. Since any realistic long-term transportation bill will have to address the question of raising more money to pay for long-delayed infrastructure rebuilding projects, neither side wants to go near anything associated with increased spending or taxes no matter how essential.
We’ve run out of funding gimmicks to hide the reality that we need to step up our investments in public infrastructure. Now or later, Congress is going to have to make the decision it has been pushing off for way too long. Logic says the right solution will be an increase in fuel taxes, either a flat raise or a percentage indexed to inflation. Most in trucking are ready for it, and given the growing cost of congestion, it should also be a palatable solution for most of the public.
So, Congress, quit stalling.
