Bipartisan Highway Bill Should Raise Gas Tax

The FAST Act, which will provide approximately $300 billion over five years, continues to distribute over 90 percent of federal highway funding to State DOTs through formulas and maintains the current Federal-aid Highway program structure. Senators from Missouri and Arkansas split on the bill.

Fourteen Republican Senators voted against the bill along with Democratic Sens.

“But (it’s) only a first step”, Earnest said, “because we believe that there are more infrastructure projects that are worthy of funding that would create jobs in the short term and lay a long-term foundation for our ongoing economic strength over the long term”. Hundreds of Arkansas projects were at risk of cancellation or further delays if a long-term bill was not passed.

In addition to the boost in funding, the Newberg-Dundee bypass and the OR portion of Interstate 205 were designated high-priority corridors, which makes it much more likely that they’ll get federal funds in the future.

Instead, Carper said, the new transportation law “demands that just about everyone in our country pay more for our transportation system, except for the people who actually use our roads and highways”. The bill now goes to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signature.

Congress has been struggling for years to come up with a way to pay for a long-term transportation funding extension without raising the gas tax.

A big shortcoming in the bill, though, is how it’s all financed.

Notably, the bill neglects to raise the federal 18.4-cent per gallon gas tax that hasn’t been raised since 1993. To cover the funding shortfall, the new legislation draws on several one-time revenue measures, including $53 billion in Federal Reserve surplus funds, $6.2 billion from the sale of part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, $5.2 billion from additional Customs and Border Protection fees and $2.4 billion in anticipated tax collections by using private collection agencies to supplement the Internal Revenue Service.

Sargent pointed out the deal increases the federal government’s annual spending on highway and transit programs.

Among the bill’s losers are large banks, which would receive lower dividends from the Federal Reserve, with the savings used for transportation programs.

The Rubber Manufacturers Association championed the provision as the best way to ensure reaching consumers in case of tire safety recalls, but the Tire Industry Association said the mandatory registration system as now written is both hopelessly outdated and unfairly punitive to independent dealers. “Most importantly, this bill included my provision to extend I-11 through Northern Nevada”. The five-year Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act restores a crop-insurance subsidy that’s available to Colorado farmers and renews the Export-Import Bank, which extends help to small businesses in the state.