Sanders Proposes $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

DALLAS - Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., offered a plan on Tuesday for increased infrastructure investments with a $1 trillion program that would raise federal highway and transit funding by almost 50% and finance local projects through a $25 billion national infrastructure bank.

Sanders' proposal would boost expenditures from the Highway Trust Fund to $75 billion a year from fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2022 from the current $53 billion. Transportation funding in the bill totals $735 billion. The bill also includes funds for national parks, rural broadband, water, power transmission and other projects.

The other funding provisions in the measure would extend through fiscal 2019.

But Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, did not identify where the $1 trillion would come from.

"A $1 trillion investment to modernize our country's physical infrastructure would not just rebuild our country but create and maintain 13 million good-paying jobs that our economy desperately needs," Sanders said Tuesday in unveiling his Rebuild America Act.

"Our infrastructure is collapsing, and the American people know it," he said.

Funding would also be provided for ports, high-speed rail projects, and airport expansions.

The Congressional Budget Office released an update on Tuesday that estimated revenues from federal gasoline and diesel taxes dedicated to the HTF at less than a total of $200 billion over the next five years.

The infrastructure bank would be capitalized with deposits of $5 billion each year over the five years.

The Sanders' plan provides $75 billion for passenger and freight rail infrastructure. The measure stipulates that intercity high-speed rail projects be a priority of the passenger rail program.

Airports would get $12.5 billion for capacity expansion grants in the five-year infrastructure program.

Water infrastructure projects would receive a total of $145 billion in federal funding over the five years.

Infrastructure investment is one area that could win bipartisan support in Congress, Sanders said. "There are a number of Republicans who understand that it is vitally important that we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure," he said.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, of which Sanders is a member, is developing its own version of a long-term transportation bill.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes on Jan. 25 that funding a long-term highway bill "is critically important to the country."

"The biggest problem is that the Highway Trust Fund, which is funded by gasoline taxes, continues to shrink as cars get more and better mileage standards," he said. "The money that's in the Highway Trust Fund isn't sufficient to meet the infrastructure needs of the country."

Boehner ruled out an increase in the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon during the 60 Minutes interview.

"We believe that through tax reform, a couple of other options that are being looked at, we can find the funds to fund a long-term highway bill," he said.

The current extension of the HTF will expire May 31.

Wells Fargo Securities senior analyst Randy Gerardes said a quick resolution of the highway funding question is unlikely.

"Perhaps we are too cynical, but we find it a stretch at best for a single-party controlled Congress and a lame duck president to agree on any long-term structural change such as an increase in the federal gas tax or any meaningful tax reform," he said.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, is a co-sponsor of the Rebuild America Act. Supporters of the measure include the American Society of Civil Engineers and the AFL-CIO.

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