Hopefully, A Road Never Traveled Again

When I see the byline of certain writers in an AP story (Nedra Pickler, Anne Flaherty), I try to pay extra-special attention because there’s a chance they’ll end up giving me something to do. And being that Andrew Taylor is another one of those people, I found this interesting item in his article yesterday about the Dems and Repugs jousting in Congress over budget priorities…

The rival budget plans display the difficult trade-offs facing the next president, who must weigh tax cuts that expire at the end of 2010 with popular spending programs like education, highway construction and Medicare. Simply put, it's impossible, under current estimates, to have it all and still claim a balanced budget.

I have to admit that I’ve never seen those items grouped together before; I mean, while Medicare is a wonderful entitlement that we’ll have to figure out how to fund under the watch of responsible adults (automatically ruling out anything until 1/21/09 at the earliest), this country could go on without it (though it would impose great hardship). However, without funding education or highway construction, this country simply cannot exist; you cannot simply write them off as “popular spending programs.”

And this made me a bit curious as to how we could have arrived at such a state where funding of our highways could be such a point of contention, so I did a little digging and found out a thing or two.

This tells us about the 1998 Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which…

…was signed into law, allowing nearly $200 billion for highway construction and maintenance from 1998 to 2003. Most of the money for federally subsidized highway and airport projects comes from excise taxes on fuel, airplane fares, trucks, and related products. Americans also spend more than $1 billion annually on tolls. In 2003 the Bush administration was working with Congress to develop a replacement package for TEA-21, which expired in September 2003.

And in anticipation of that expiration, what did Bushco do? Well, this New York Times story from February 2002 tells us that…

…Senior members of Congress from both parties said today that they would reject President Bush's proposal for a 28 percent cut in federal highway spending, one of the largest in the entire budget.

Lawmakers said the cuts would be unwise as the nation struggles to climb out of a recession and unthinkable in an election year. Building roads creates jobs, lawmakers said over and over. It also provides tidy bundles of federal cash for lawmakers to send to their home districts.

''It's hard to say anything nice about this proposal,'' Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, said.

And when George W. Milhous Bush once more had the opportunity to fund our highways in 2005 (noted here)…

Former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta recalls how his boss, President George W. Bush, bristled at the idea of raising gasoline taxes in the 2005 highway bill.

``He took his Sharpie out and said, `Norm, get those tax increases out. I don't want a tax increase,''' says Mineta.

While Bush is still opposing higher fuel taxes, the Aug. 1 (2007) Minneapolis bridge collapse has altered the political landscape. The calamity, in which at least 12 people died, has become a rallying cry for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and trade groups representing the likes of Caterpillar Inc. and Terex Corp. that want to boost spending to repair the nation's roads and bridges.

The result is that, even as Bush aides warn of a possible veto, the odds are growing for the first gasoline-tax increase since 1993. House Transportation Chairman James Oberstar, a Minnesota Democrat, proposed a new bridge-repair fund a week after the collapse that would be financed by a nickel increase in the tax, which is currently 18.4 cents a gallon.

I haven’t been able to find out what happened to Oberstar’s proposed gasoline tax increase; even if it somehow had passed (dubious for many reasons, one of which is that tax breaks for Big Oil have not been removed and it would be political suicide to pass a gas tax increase unless the tax breaks were gone), I cannot see how Incurious George would ever sign it into law anyway.

And now, with the prospect of gas at $4 a gallon for our summer vacations (those patriotic Americans at ExxonMobil and co. always find a way to “pump us,” if you will, just when we’re getting ready to hit the road in the warm weather months), I would say that the best chance for us to pay a gas tax increase for road and bridge repair has evaporated like a plume of crude from a blown PCV valve.

So there you have it; our preznit has “held the line” on a “popular spending program” like highway construction. What a guy.

Let’s continue, then, to hope and pray that another bridge collapse doesn’t occur, or at the very least, we don’t suffer a busted car axle or two from discovering a heretofore unknown pot hole on one of our highways.