It was a red letter day in Congress. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, a liberal Democrat, and Sen. James M. Imhofe, a very conservative Republican from Oklahoma, walked into the House of Representatives and hand-delivered a transportation bill to House members.
They didn’t call it a bill, although it had already passed the Senate. On the walk over, it became a mere “proposal” to let House members know it was open to compromise on the particulars.
Why this extradordinary bipartisan courtesy? Because the current transportation funding bill is due to expire June 30 and there is no sign that House Republicans are ready to back an extension.
Some of them want more money for light rail and other urban transportation projects. Others refuse to vote for a bill that doesn’t include a mandate to build the Keystone XL Pipeline, even though the pipeline is an entirely separate issue. None, apparently, favor increasing funding even though the Highway Trust Fund is out of money and unemployment in the road building industry is above 14 percent and climbing.
Historically, the federal transportation bill has provided funding for five or six years. It is a measure of how dysfunctional Congress has become today that funding has been pushed forward a year at a time — or less — making it impossible for states to plan their own transportation programs intelligently.
Facing another crisis, Speaker John Boehner has he may press for a six-month extension if the House and Senate fail to reach a deal by June 30. Taking the program past the November election would make it easier to reach a compromise, he explained.
Not only is Congress failing to provide predictable funding on a multi-year basis, it is ignoring the fact that building roads, bridges and airport runways puts people to work at good wages at a time when the economy remains shaky and unemployment stays unacceptably high.
With proper funding, the industry could put an estimated 2.9 million to work and give the economies in all 50 states a healthy boost.
HOW SHOULD the trust fund be replenished? With higher fuel taxes, of course. The 18.2 cent a gallon gas tax hasn’t been raised since 1993. Considering how much the price of oil has increased in the past 19 years — just to single out one factor in the cost of road building — it is scandalous that Congress has been so unwilling to meet this basic responsibility to the American people and to the American economy.
Doubling the federal tax would add about 18 cents a gallon to the cost. The price of gasoline at the pump has gone up that much in a matter of weeks time after time in the past decade.
There is no more conservative way to pay for good highways than a use tax. Using fuel taxes, those who benefit most from highways, bridges and airports pay for their upkeep and modernization.
It should not be necessary to add that putting fuel taxes to work building and maintaining the nation’s transportation infrastructure stimulates the economy. Every penny spent on infrastructure is a penny earned by the workers and contractors employed in the industry. All that spending strengthens the economy as it becomes income to the industry.
To pretend, as so many anti-taxers do, that money spent by government somehow disappears into the ether without benefit to the economy is an out-and-out falsehood. Stimulating the economy is not the purpose of transportation programs, but it is one of the results of wise investment in our nation’s infrastructure and to argue otherwise is simply to ignore the obvious truth.
When clear thinking returns to Washington, Democrats and Republicans will once again work together to build and maintain a prosperous America.
