DALLAS – A coalition of 34 transportation, labor, and travel groups is pressing the presidential candidates for details on how they plan to fund the renewal of the nation's aging roads, bridges, and transit systems.
The coalition sent identical letters to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump on Oct. 5 asking them in the final month of the 2016 campaign to include long-term, sustainable transportation funding measures as part of their infrastructure renewal proposals.
The letters were signed by executives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, America Road & Transportation Builders Association, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, AAA, Laborers' International Union of North America, and 29 others.
"Throughout your campaign you have expressed support for dramatic increases in infrastructure investment, which we all agree should be a top priority of the next administration," the coalition said in the letters to the candidates. "We believe that an infrastructure package needs to include, as a foundation, additional sustainable revenue to ensure the permanent solvency of the Highway Trust Fund."
Several of the coalition's groups pushed Congress to raise the federal gasoline tax last year to fully fund the $305 billion, five-year Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act.
Lawmakers instead opted to bolster the FAST Act with $70 billion of general revenues to supplement the $210 billion or so expected over five years from the federal gasoline tax of 18.4 cents per gallon and other revenues dedicated to the HTF.
"The additional revenue sources must be long-term, reliable, dedicated and focused on the users and beneficiaries of our transportation network to support the increased investment provided under your infrastructure proposal," the coalition said.
Failure to provide a sustainable, long-term funding source for federal highway and transit funding in the FAST Act "has had dramatic negative effects on the ability of state and local governments to plan, fund, and construct transportation projects," the coalition said in the letter. "As a consequence, the economy has missed an opportunity to increase good-paying jobs and has hampered America's economic competitiveness."
The coalition members said they would work with the next administration to get congressional approval on a reliable transportation funding source.
"Our industries stand ready to work with you to ensure any new infrastructure investment proposal you offer has the greatest possible impact on our nation's economy and transportation network," they said in the letters.
Trump has proposed funding infrastructure with revenues from a one-time, 10% tax rate on foreign corporate earnings and an end to the deferral of U.S. taxes on corporate income earned abroad.
Clinton has proposed a $250 billion infrastructure jobs plan financed in part through unspecified business tax reforms, a $25 billion national infrastructure bank, and revival of the Build America Bonds program.
The American Trucking Associations may have to abandon its long-held position that higher federal fuel taxes indexed to inflation are the best way to fund highways, said ATA president Chris Spear.
"We have long been an advocate for an increased, indexed fuel tax…but the Washington ideologues and the pressure they've applied on Congress in recent years has put a 60-year bipartisan policy and reliable funding source in jeopardy," he said at the group's annual meeting earlier this month.
The ATA will develop a new funding proposal that it can take to Congress in 2017 that does not include a fuel tax increase, Spear said.
"If this is to be the fate of our nation's fuel tax, then ATA must be prepared to realign our policies with the realities on Capitol Hill, beginning with a new means for funding our nation's infrastructure," he said.
