Senator Alexander is sure to know the principle of subsidiarity: That government activities should be run at the lowest practicable level, for example at a local level rather than at a national one.

The transportation sector comprises many different activities: Private companies can provide and maintain infrastructure; states can contract with such companies to provide facilities that users or voters are prepared to pay for; private insurers can test and license vehicles and drivers; local authorities can finance local roads from property taxes; and federal governments can commission and supervise research.

Despite Emil’s doubts, transferring to the states responsibility for funding transportation seems a good idea. Agreed that there are “important national purposes and interests in transportation” but these may not justify financing by a federal government. Certainly not until somebody (at the Bipartisan Policy Center?) spells out these “national purposes and interests”, and shows how federal financing could advance them better in the future than it has in the past.

“High-Speed Rail” and “Livability” may not be on everybody’s list of “national purposes and interests”.

In the present atmosphere of partisan and ideological stalemate, it is hard to imagine that a "grand swap" of transportation and Medicaid programs would have much chance of enactment. Moreover, this particular swap would appear to lack a driving logic: there is little nexus between the two program areas, and both state and national interests are involved in many transportation projects and programs.

To be sure, federal funding for surface transportation has stagnated, and may even decline, in the context of persistent annual budget deficits, a growing national debt, and the continued unwillingness of Congress even to consider increasing user-based transportation-related taxes and fees. In these circumstance, it is almost certain that states and localities will have to bear more of the burden of maintaining and restoring transportation assets, despite their own very serious fiscal challenges. The recent results in Georgia notwithstanding, there is a great deal of evidence that state and local referanda and initiatives to increase and dedicate specific taxes to transportation can succeed, even when there is general resistance to tax increases, as long as those taxes are related to specific investments and projects.

However, these are not sufficient reasons for the federal government to transfer all of its transportation funding and investment responsibilities to the states. There remain important national purposes and interests in transportation -- some, as old as the Republic, itself -- connectivity, economic growth, energy security, safety, and environmental sustainability. As the Birpartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project (NTPP) and others have stated consistently over the last few years, we have lost sight of these national goals and purposes, when considering federal surface transportation legislation in the most recent past, and, as a result, support for federal funding has declined.

"Shuffling" resources does not seem an appropriate response to these circumstances. Rather, difficult as it will be, it continues to be necessary to identify and define clearly the national interests and purposes in the transportation sector (perhaps more narrowly drawn than has been the case recently) and then to put in place sustainable and, preferably, user-based revenue streams to support those interests.