Blue Dog Group Presses Panel For Highway Fund Fix

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DALLAS -- A group of conservative House Democrats has asked Ways & Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to hold a hearing on fixing the chronically insolvent Highway Trust Fund soon after Congress returns from its two-week Easter recess.

"Any comprehensive infrastructure package should be fully paid for in a fiscally responsible manner," lawmakers in the Blue Dog Coalition said in a letter sent to Reps. Ryan and Sander Levin, D-Mich., the committee's ranking minority Democratic member.

The HTF's latest short-term patch, which was accomplished by transferring $10.8 billion of general tax revenues, will expire May 31. Without additional revenues or another general fund transfer, reimbursements from the HTF to states for highway and transit projects could be delayed or curtailed as early as June.

"With the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund looming, we believe Congress must act in a bipartisan manner to ensure that we are able to make critical investments in our nation's aging infrastructure to boost the economy and put more Americans back to work," the conservative caucus said in the letter that was signed by co-chairs Reps. Kurt Schrader from Oregon, Jim Cooper from Tennessee and Jim Costa from California, as well as 12 others from the group's 19 members.

Congress will be on recess until the week of April 13.

"There is considerable bipartisan enthusiasm for passing a multiyear transportation bill this Congress, but passing any legislation is dependent upon a long-term funding solution," the Blue Dogs said. "Roads, bridges, and transit systems are in a state of disrepair across the country and the Highway Trust Fund can no longer sustain current needs."

Extending the fund's solvency through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2015, would require an additional $10 billion. Expenditures from the HTF in fiscal 2015 are expected to total $53.7 billion, but the fund's dedicated revenues from federal gasoline and diesel taxes will likely total only $39.6 billion.

Ryan said last week that he expects to find the revenue for federal transportation funding through comprehensive tax reform rather than an increase in the federal gasoline tax or repatriation of corporate foreign earnings.

Rewriting the tax code is so complex that another in a series of short-term HTF extensions will be needed to keep federal transportation dollars flowing to the states through the rest of fiscal 2015, Ryan said.

The House Ways and Means Committee has not held a hearing on transportation funding since Republicans took it over in January 2011. Democrats on the committee sent two letters last year to then- chairman David Camp, R-Mich., asking for highway hearings, but no sessions were held.

President Obama's six-year, $478 billion Grow America Act would be funded with $440 billion of federal fuel tax revenues and $438 billion from a mandatory 14% transition tax on corporate foreign accumulated earnings.

The funding issue was highlighted in an analysis released on Wednesday by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association that said 61,064 bridges in the U.S. are structurally deficient and in need of significant repair. The structurally compromised bridges carry a total of 215 million vehicles a day, ARTBA said.

States currently have a backlog of $115 billion in bridge repairs and $755 billion in deferred highway projects, said ARTBA chief economist Alison Premo Black. About half of state transportation infrastructure spending is provided by federal funding through the HTF, she said.

"Elected officials can't just sprinkle fairy dust on America's bridge problem and wish it away," Black said. "It will take committed investment by legislators at all levels of government."

ARTBA has proposed a 15-cent increase in the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon that would be partially offset for individual filers with a $90 income tax rebate.

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