Cutting Highways Is Not So Popular
It was a pretty poor showing last Friday for an idea touted by House Republican leaders just a year and a half ago. On Friday, only about one-third of the House Republicans cast their votes in favor of a nonbinding, message to legislators that they should keep infrastructure spending within the limits of the highway trust fund, which would have the practical effect of cutting highway funding by about one-third.
Sponsored by hard-core tea partier Rep. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., the nonbinding instruction to lawmakers only got 82 votes, all from Republicans. The idea was a simple one, to live within our means. But it has such broad-reaching implications for the federal highway program that even serious conservatives like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp, R-Mich., voted against it. Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who is leading the conference committee on the highway bill, cheered the result. "I am very encouraged today that the House of Representatives soundly defeated an irresponsible proposal to cut transportation spending by many billions of dollars," she said. "This bipartisan vote sends a strong signal to the transportation conference committee that we should reach agreement swiftly."
There are signs that a resolution may be near. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week proposed a twofer funding option, using federal pension accounting, to pay for a highway bill and a one-year freeze of a 3.4 percent student loan interest rate. Republicans appear at least willing to consider the idea, but there is so much distrust on both sides of the aisle that both political parties need to calm down and keep away from the TV cameras to make it happen.
Is it now passé to call for keeping infrastructure funding within the highway trust fund? What has changed since the beginning of this Congress that has allowed so many Republicans to comfortably say that current highway funding levels should be maintained? How does a conversation about the highway trust fund and its limitations impact the infrastructure debate? Was Broun's maneuver useful to the conversation or was it a distraction?
June 12, 2012 11:24 PM
Living within one’s means?
By Gabriel Roth
Research Fellow, The Independent Institute
I suppose we have learnt to expect Senate Democrats, who have not produced a national budget in three years, to consider “irresponsible”, a proposal “to live within our means”. And I suspect that in Pat Jones’s organization — the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association — it is those who do not live within their means who are considered “irresponsible”. Outsiders should not take the easy path and preach that one approach is superior.
But some of us may ask why Barbara Boxer and her colleagues should determine how much travelers should pay for using roads, and how the revenues should be spent.
Senator Boxer surely understands the principle of “subsidiarity”, which postulates that government decisions should occur at the lowest possible level, for example at a state level rather than at the federal one. Devolving highway financing to the states would make it easier for road users to decide whether they want their road providers to live within their means or outside them.
Might Senator Boxer then focus her undoubted talents on creating and passing a federal budget?
June 12, 2012 7:44 AM
The 112th "Congresses"
By Patrick D. Jones
Executive Director & CEO, International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association
We may forgive the Congress for being schizophrenic in their desire both to preserve the current level of highway funding and to live within their means. After all, they are a reflection of us, their constituents. As a country, we have demonstrated a profound desire to have it both ways: to talk a good game on reducing deficits and the debt and at the same time to spend like there is no tomorrow.
We may also forgive them because there really isn’t “A Congress” in this country; in fact, we have multiple “Congresses.” We have the establishment Congress, the Tea Party Congress, the retiring Congress, the leadership Congress, the liberal Congress, the conservative Congress, the coastal Congress, the heartland Congress, etc. These adjectives describing the various “Congresses” are illustrative and unscientific; feel free to come up with your own. The point is, we don’t have a “Congress” in the normal sense of the word: a body of individuals committed to a unified purpose – making laws – to advance the commo...
We may forgive the Congress for being schizophrenic in their desire both to preserve the current level of highway funding and to live within their means. After all, they are a reflection of us, their constituents. As a country, we have demonstrated a profound desire to have it both ways: to talk a good game on reducing deficits and the debt and at the same time to spend like there is no tomorrow.
We may also forgive them because there really isn’t “A Congress” in this country; in fact, we have multiple “Congresses.” We have the establishment Congress, the Tea Party Congress, the retiring Congress, the leadership Congress, the liberal Congress, the conservative Congress, the coastal Congress, the heartland Congress, etc. These adjectives describing the various “Congresses” are illustrative and unscientific; feel free to come up with your own. The point is, we don’t have a “Congress” in the normal sense of the word: a body of individuals committed to a unified purpose – making laws – to advance the common interests of the nation.
Since all of these Congresses are not able to decide, collectively, whether to spend more or less, I would ask them simply to do one thing: remove the ban on tolling interstate highways. If “Congress” cannot decide, then let the states decide. At the very least, Congress should give the states the flexibility (an option, not a mandate) to use every available tool to fund and rebuild the most important roads within their borders: the interstate highways.
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