DALLAS - Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., asked for action on a list of options to revive the chronically insolvent Highway Trust Fund that she provided in September to Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"Last month, I had hand-delivered to your office a series of options that I developed to address the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund, but I have not yet received any feedback from you," she said Thursday in letters to Camp and Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., the ranking minority member of the committee.
Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, did not identify the proposed options in her letter but said Congress should find a solution before the current congressional sessions ends.
"The Highway Trust Fund is a problem that can be solved, and this Congress must uphold its responsibility to come up with a sustainable funding solution," she said in the letter.
"There are many reasonable ways to continue a self-funded transportation program, and I will not stop working until we in Congress have the courage to do what is right for jobs and business and our nation," Boxer said.
In September, Boxer said she planned to propose five or six options to bolster highway funding to the leaders of the two tax-writing committees, House Ways and Means and Senate Finance.
Boxer said the committees could pick on option or combine parts from all of them, but she maintained her preference for a sales tax on the whole price of oil at the refinery to replace federal fuel taxes dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund.
The HTF is the source of most federal highway and transit grants to the states. Current revenues from the18.4 cents per gallon tax on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gasoline of diesel total about $15 billion less a year than expenditures from the fund.
Boxer said a decision on how to fund highway spending must be reached well before the current funding runs out next year. Congress extended the solvency of the HTF in late July with a 10-month, $10.8 billion extension.
"Although Congress passed a short-term Highway Trust Fund patch and an extension of our surface transportation programs in MAP-21 through May 31, 2015, the longer we wait to find a long-term funding solution for our critical infrastructure the worse it will be," Boxer said in the letter. "The devastating economic impacts of failing to ensure the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund can be avoided."
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., introduced legislation in May that would raise the federal gasoline tax by 12 cent per gallon to eliminate the HTF's structural deficit by generating an additional $18 billion per year.
