DALLAS — A bill proposed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., would cut the federal gasoline tax by 80% over five years and give the states more responsibility for funding transportation projects.
The proposed Transportation Empowerment Act (TEA) would lower the federal gasoline tax from 18.4 cents per gallon to 3.7 cents and replace the remaining federal transportation funding with block grants.
The Highway Trust Fund is broken and states need the flexibility to determine their own transportation needs and how to pay for them, Lee said. He proposed a similar devolution proposal with an identical name last year but found little support in the Senate for the idea.
Lee said devolution would allow states to keep their infrastructure dollars for local projects.
"It is just an outdated system that is long overdue for reform," Lee said.
"Our bill would update today's broken infrastructure funding system by slowly cutting the federal gas tax, thus giving states the opportunity to better identify which projects need funding and how to fund them," he said.
Congress has transferred more than $63 billion into the Highway Trust Fund from the general fund over the last seven years because the gasoline tax revenues going into it are less than the state transportation project expenditures its funds are being used to reimburse. As a result of the transfers, all states receive more from the HTF than they generate in federal fuel taxes.
Meanwhile House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, D-Wis., announced the panel will hold a hearing on June 17 on finding the revenue needed to fund a multiyear transportation bill. "Solving this challenge for the long term will require us to think big, and I look forward to exploring new ideas to close the shortfall once and for all," Ryan said.
A six-year surface transportation program would require up to $90 billion of additional revenue, the Congressional Budget Office said last month. Collections dedicated to the HTF total about $40 billion per year, but annual expenditures are some $53 billion.
Reform of the international tax system is the most likely source of the additional revenue, said Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., chairman of the HWM committee's panel on select revenue measures.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a member of the HWM Committee, said he is encouraged by Ryan's decision to hold the funding session.
"This scheduled hearing could be a step forward to finding a sustainable, long-term solution to pay for infrastructure in our nation that's falling apart as we fall behind," he said.
Blumenauer is the sponsor of a proposal to raise the gasoline tax by 15 cents over three years to fully fund a multiyear bill.
The latest attempt at devolution is unlikely to gain traction in the Senate, said Bill Graves, chief executive officer of the American Trucking Associations and a former governor of Kansas.
"Congress soundly rejected the devolution idea last year, and they did so for good reason," he said. "Rehashing settled issues like this delay real action to address the nation's pressing need for improved roads."
A coalition of 38 transportation and companies sent a letter to lawmakers in March asking them to not sponsor legislation that would shift surface transportation funding to states.
"Devolution proposals are not a solution to the long-term infrastructure funding question, but rather serve as a distraction from the debate about how best to fully fund our nation's infrastructure," the coalition said in the letter.
"TEA is an ill-conceived proposal that would strip away most federal funding for surface transportation projects, essentially eliminating the federal government's constitutionally mandated role in promoting interstate commerce," it said.
