CONGRESS IS poised to temporarily patch the country's transportation funding system — like it has nearly three dozen times over the past several years. Each time this number ticks up it underscores Congress's dysfunction. Privately, many members of Congress know that raising the federal gas tax is a ready and reasonable way to pay for the nation's infrastructure. Publicly, most lawmakers are too spineless to face up to this reality. The result has been impasse after impasse as Congress has attempted to find money elsewhere — leaving the country's investment in roads, rails and bridges on short-term and unsustainable footing.
The House is on break this week, and top on the list of priorities when lawmakers return will be choosing a new speaker and avoiding national default by raising the debt limit before Nov. 5. On Oct. 29, however, the federal system that pays for the country’s transportation infrastructure will shut down unless Congress acts. Most likely, lawmakers will authorize the Transportation Department to continue drawing on money it has left to finance several more weeks of highway construction. But that will run out in December.
The Senate passed a highway bill over the summer that was billed as a six-year policy but offered only three years' worth of guaranteed funding, drawn from sources such as the sale of 101 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee plans to mark up a highway bill next week, but it's unclear where the money to pay for it will come from and how it would jibe with the Senate's proposal. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been trying to hash out a deal with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reform corporate taxes, generating a one-time windfall for the Treasury that would be channeled into infrastructure. But that deal hasn't been struck, and the idea faces opposition among top Senate Republicans. It's possible Republicans will try to kick the can into 2017, when they would hope to negotiate a more permanent plan with a new president.
The whole spectacle is, well, pathetic. A sustainable source of funding to maintain and upgrade infrastructure is a basic requirement for any modern nation. Congress had one for decades. But the 18.4 cents-per-gallon gas tax hasn’t been increased since the early 1990s, and inflation has eroded its purchasing power. Modestly hiking the tax — and indexing it to inflation this time — would prevent Congress from having to constantly look under the cushions in search of money for the transportation budget. It would also make drivers pay for the roads they use. Waiting until 2017, or even until December, won’t alter that logic.
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