New Congress Faces Financial Challenge in Reauthorizing Surface Transportation Program

摘要

Upon convening in early January, the 114th Congress had slightly more than five months to address the most pressing deadline involving infrastructure-the May 31 expiration of the federal surface transportation program. With the Highway Trust Fund unable to collect enough revenues to remain solvent, much less meet the nation's highway and mass transit needs, Congress will be sorely pressed to devise new funding sources for transportation. Emphasizing this point is a recent report from two prominent groups documenting the continued shortfall between the needs of the surface transportation system and the available funding. Faced with the imminent insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, Congress passed legislation last summer extending the federal surface transportation program through May 31 of this year. Because they could not agree on how to increase funding for highway and mass transit programs, lawmakers simply transferred nearly $10 billion from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund, which finances federal spending on highways and mass transit. At the same time, Congress also transferred $1 billion to the Highway Trust Fund from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund (see "Congress Averts Highway Trust Fund Crisis but Postpones Long-Term Solution," Civil Engineering, September 2014, pages 14-15). Although the transfers kept the Highway Trust Fund solvent in the short term, they did nothing to address the fund's underlying problems.