Abraham Lincoln called Henry Clay “my beau idol,” largely because he was dedicated to building America. Clay focused on constructing roads and inland waterways to tie America together, create prosperity and improve the lives of all citizens. In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln created the first transcontinental railroad. Teddy Roosevelt championed the Panama Canal, Dwight Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, and Ronald Reagan increased the motor fuel user fee to grow federal transportation investment. All were conservative Republicans.

Indeed, conservatives have a rich legacy of building assets to improve America, recognizing the difference between wasteful or unnecessary government spending and wise capital investment which provides the American people and American businesses with the tools they need to prosper. Fortunately, most modern-day conservatives still believe in building America.

And that will be important because the new Congress will face extraordinary fiscal challenges—a lackluster economy and enormous and unsustainable budget deficits—that threaten our way of life. These problems are so serious that some question whether America still has what it takes to solve them. Will our political institutions be able to work together—Democrats and Republicans, the House and Senate, Congress and the Executive Branch—to lay the foundation for long-term, sustainable economic growth? Will they be able to reduce our current budget deficits of more than a trillion dollars a year? Will they be able to address the long-term structural budget deficit proactively in a thoughtful way, or will it take a crisis such as defaulting on bonds to force action? Americans will be watching, as will the world.

Transportation investment is an essential part of the solution. If the new Congress is to lay the foundation for long-term, sustainable economic growth, it must pass a robust, long-term surface transportation bill. Study after study has documented the massive underinvestment in our nation’s surface transportation infrastructure. So has the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Congress, both of which have called for increased Federal investment in our surface transportation network. The Chamber has concluded that “the nation’s economic stability, potential for job growth, and global competitiveness are at risk” if the underinvestment continues.

In fact, the Chamber recently released a landmark study: the Transportation Performance Index. It proves—for the first time—a direct relationship between transportation infrastructure performance and GDP. The Chamber study concluded that the U.S. transportation network is NOT serving the needs of businesses and the overall U.S. economy. America is falling behind, as other nations race ahead. The study also concluded that if we pursue business as usual over the next five years, it will cost the economy $336 billion in lost growth.

The new Congress must not let this happen. Instead, Congress must pass a meaningful, six-year transportation bill that reforms the federal program, focuses on the national interest, provides for an appropriate federal role, and shortens the time it takes to build projects. And the bill must substantially increase funding and provide the financing necessary to get the job done in a deficit-neutral way. This increased investment is so important that organizations representing the users of the system—NAM, the Chamber, trucking organizations, the AAA, and others—have all expressed a willingness to pay more IF Congress passes a bill that will actually upgrade our highways, transit systems and intermodal facilities in a meaningful way.

Without adequate funding and financing the bill—regardless of other reforms—would just be a hollow promise. Our transportation systems would continue to deteriorate, and our highways and transit systems would continue to have insufficient capacity to meet the needs of a growing population. Our economy would continue to suffer. Congress must not go down this path. The American people are looking for real solutions, not false hope.

If Republicans are in control of the House and/or Senate in the new Congress, and if it is one of the most conservative congresses as Congressman Mica speculated, that does not mean that we have to “lower our sights,” to borrow a phrase from Ken Orski. Just the opposite should be the case. Conservatives should realize how important it is for the American people and American businesses to have a strong national transportation platform on which to compete in today’s competitive global marketplace. Only in this way will we be able sustain a growing economy that generates the private sector jobs we need over the long term. And to top it off, a visionary transportation initiative would be a source a great national pride.

By the way, the same holds true if Democrats retain control of Congress. It’s time for the two political parties to work together for the common good. We must put America first. A visionary, bipartisan transportation initiative would be a great way to start.

Bob –

While the federal government has a legitimate interest in a well-functioning national highway system, should it necessarily have a major role in transportation investment? The federal government has an interest in good telecommunications, but it does not (yet) fund it.

Since the completion of the Interstate Highway System, the influence of the federal congress on transportation financing has been more destructive than helpful. What leads you to believe that a congress guided by the likes of Congressman Mica (a supporter of “High-Speed Rail” projects for which no benefit/cost ratios are published) would do better?

Emil points out that “no matter how much we invest, available funds need to be invested wisely”. Your suggestion that “all federally supported projects meet or exceed a benefit/cost ratio of 1.5" would benefit transportation economists (thank you) but will it influence congressional appropriations?

To obtain “wiser” investments, would it not be preferable to have them privately provided and financed by transportation users?

While transportation has, as the question notes, typically been an issue that cuts across partisan and ideological lines, those circumstances have been somewhat less in evidence in the last few years and may not characterize the discussion over enactment of a surface transportation authorization bill in the new Congress. I have no doubt that there will be elements of both parties in Congress (even with expected changes in the compositions of the membership) that will be committed to the passage of a new bill. I certainly include Congressman Mica, for example, in this category, but his ideas about an authorization bill could be quite different from Chairman Oberstar's STAA.

Both parties should recognize that adequate investment in transportation infrastructure is a precondition to economic recovery. However, the next two years are likely to be dominated by discussion of fiscal constraints, expenditure freezes or caps, reducing annual budget deficits, and a ballooning national debt. The reports of the Bipartisan Policy Center's deficit reduction task force (expected in mid-November) and of the President's fiscal commission in early December are likely to heighten these concerns and, one hopes, to turn the discussion of these issues in a more constructive direction than we have witnessed during the mid-term election campaigns.

How will all this affect the "lame duck" session and the newly elected Congress next year? Certainly, the enactment of a multi-year authorization bill or even of a $50 billion "down payment" for such a bill (as the President proposed on Labor Day) in the lame duck session faces substantial challenges, and few would be surprised if Congress is only able to pass another short-term extension of SAFETEA-LU beyond its present end-of-December expiration date. DOT appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011 face similar hurdles during this short session.

However, the deficit-reduction context can also be seen as an opening for the introduction of wiser investment decisions. While a continued unwillingness to address transportation investment funding issues or to increase transportation-related revenues could lead to a further stalemate on passage of a big multi-year authorization bill, these circumstances could also create an opportunity for the enactment of the comprehensive and fundamental reforms in national transportation policy and programs that the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) and others have advocated. Indeed, if the surface transportation program is limited in a shorter-term bill to current levels of resources (that is, motor fuel taxes at current rates) and/or to roughly current program levels, we are going to have to make better decisions about how to invest those constrained resources and about how to use available federal funds to leverage most effectively other potential sources of transportation capital investment.

The prospect of severely limited resources will make possible -- indeed, will make essential -- the establishment of a broad consensus in the new Congress around applying principles of outcomes, performance, and accountability in national transportation policy. In times of fiscal constraint and intense resource competition, most members of the next Congress should be able to find common cause in the necessity for wise investment and for prioritizing funding around those programs and projects that promise the greatest returns, in terms of national economic, energy, environmental, and safety goals. While transportation undoubtedly needs more federal funding, no matter how much we invest, available funds need to be invested wisely.

Most transportation groups inside the Beltway don’t seem to realize the depth of public disaffection from Congress and the federal government. If the Republicans do ride this wave of anti-Washington feeling to control of one or both houses of Congress, it’s likely that any bill to reauthorize the federal program will reflect the concerns that elected them.

And that means we will see nothing like the ambitious expansion of the federal role called for in the $500 billion Oberstar bill, or the major shift away from dedicated-mode funding repeatedly hinted at by the President and his DOT leadership (such as talk of a “transportation” trust fund and a shift away from formula-driven programs).

Some of the themes that resonate in the current anti-Washington mood are opposition to tax increases of any kind, getting rid of earmarks, and devolving much that is now centralized in DC to the states. The challenge for advocates of increased infrastructure investment is to figure out how to make their case within those kinds of constraints.

There are several key policy changes that would enable meaningful increases in needed highway investment consistent with today’s anti-DC ethos:

• Narrow the scope of the federal Highway Trust Fund to major interstate programs only (i.e., rebuilding and modernizing existing Interstates and upgrading selected NHS routes to Interstate standards);
• Couple a ban on earmarks with a requirement that all federally supported projects meet or exceed a benefit/cost ratio of 1.5;
• Jettison Oberstar’s plan to regulate tolling and public-private partnerships, focusing instead on having FHWA disseminate best practices to the states;
• Expand the TIFIA credit program and the ability of states to issue Private Activity Bonds for state PPP projects;
• Generalize the two existing pilot programs under which a handful of Interstate projects can be financed with tolling, retaining their current restrictions on the use of toll revenues (which the trucking industry has supported).

These measures would empower states to focus their efforts on the most critically important highway infrastructure, investing in both rehabilitation and new capacity, as needed. If states wanted to continue politically correct programs such as Recreational Trails, Safe Routes to School, CMAQ, and the like, they would be free to do so using their own funds.

In a more conservative, anti-Washington Congress, we can expect renewed moves to abolish the federal program altogether, divesting the taxing authority to the states. That would be a mistake, and there is a clear conservative case, based on the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, for the federal government to ensure the free flow of trade and travel among the states—which the Interstate system clearly does. There is no such mandate for the feds to pay for local/regional programs such as sidewalks, bike paths, streetcars, etc.—especially if funded with “highway user taxes.”

We should encourage the new Congress to rethink—not abandon—the federal role in surface transportation.

How would a Republican-controlled Congress deal with transport infrastructure? It is difficult to argue with Ken Orski’s prediction that little will change, but that a government that has run out of other people’s money to spend might actually spend less.

Might some lawmakers wonder why expenditures on transport infrastructure need to be determined by the federal congress? Congress does not yet determine expenditures on vehicles, why on infrastructure? What has happened to the “user pays” principle, which was the rule for most US transport expenditure until the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 forced road users to support a new “Mass Transit Account?”

So, while I hope, with Ken, that federal resources will be focused “only on programs having a long-standing, well-established and essential federal role”, I am not optimistic about the prospects, nor do I understand why road users and other federal taxpayers should be expected to pay for urban transit projects.

If there is a certain reluctance for many of us to go on record with political predictions, it's understandable. Nonetheless, in the interest of getting this week's dialogue going, here are my thoughts:

First of all, Rep.Mica may well be correct in saying that the next Congress will probably be "the most conservative in a decade." But this should not preclude the passage of a multi-year transportation bill, a legislation that has always received bi-partisan support. However, the bill should get on the legislative agenda in the first 8-10 months of the new Congress, otherwise it might get caught in the 2012 presidential election cycle.

I do think that a bill enacted in the 112th Congress would be much leaner that the $500 billion bill proposed by Rep. Oberstar. A Republican majority, elected on a pledge to put an end to runaway spending and to shrink the scope of government might well decide to focus federal resources only on programs having a long-standing, well-established and essential federal role --- basically the core elements (both highway and transit) of the federal-aid program. States would assume responsibility (if they so elected) for programs that respond to local political objectives, e.g. Transportation Enhancement activities, "Livable Communities," etc. Shedding discretionary programs of local interest would offer a partial solution to the problem of bridging the funding shortfall that exists today.

For example, a 3-year surface transportation bill, funded at an annual level of $52 billion/year ---which roughly would pay for the primary core activities of both the highway and transit programs --- would cost a manageable sum of $156 billion. With FY 2011-2013 highway trust fund tax revenues and interest expected to generate approximately $120 billion (CBO August 2010 estimate) the annual shortfall would require only a relatively modest supplemental contribution from general revenue of $12 billion/year.

In sum, the expansive federal-aid surface transportation program as we have known it in the past two decades, may have become out of reach --- politically and fiscally. However, a more modest program, focused on transportation activities that are deemed of essential federal interest, could in my judgment gain bipartisan support.

Updated at 12:06 p.m.

Last week, I interviewed Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who is slated to take over the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee if the Republicans win control of the House.

Mica repeatedly expressed his commitment to a long-term reauthorization of surface transportation funding. "My first goal, if we get the opportunity, would be to do a six-year bill," he said.

Mica and Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn., started talking about a long-term reauthorization a year ago. If Mica takes the helm, he would ask for some serious changes to the outline he and Oberstar have discussed, like faster timetables for projects and more fungible money between programs.

If the political will is there, the negotiations could continue. "I'm willing to sit down November 3," Mica said.

Or....

On the heels of a contentious election, there may be no appetite for any type substantive transportation spending measure, no matter the state of the highway trust fund. "You're going to have, probably, the most conservative Congress in a decade," Mica warned.

Mica wasn't keen on the $50 billion in up-front infrastructure money proposed by President Obama last week, calling it a political move from the White House that was made without consulting Congress. That lack of trust, if it continues, will make it difficult for lawmakers to get serious about setting transportation policy, even if both business groups and labor unions are crying out for it.