DALLAS - The 50% boost in federal transportation funding in President Obama's proposed six-year, $478 billion Grow America Act would overcome the inertia created by years of under-investment in U.S. infrastructure, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Tuesday at a Senate hearing.
States and cities have become reluctant to plan for large, complex highway and transit projects because federal funding has too often been authorized for months rather than years, Foxx said in testimony at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing on his department's $94.7 billion budget for fiscal 2016.
"The planning process at the state level is grinding to a halt," he said. "With a six-year spending bump of 50% and stable funding, we'll start to see planning happen for long-term projects."
Federal transportation funding has operated under a series of 21 continuing resolutions for 39 of the last 77 months for lack of a multiyear bill, Foxx said. In addition to the resolutions, surface transportation programs have been extended by 11 short-term measures since 2009, he said.
The current funding measure, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21, was authorized for 27 months when passed by Congress in 2012. The 10-month extension of MAP-21 approved in summer 2014 will expire May 31.
The Transportation Department's budget request of $94.7 billion for fiscal 2016, the first year of the six-year transportation proposal, allocates $51 billion to highways and surface transportation projects, an increase of $10 billion from fiscal 2015, and $18 billion to transit, an increase of $7 billion.
The six-year proposal provides $317 billion for highways, an increase of 29% over fiscal 2015 funding, and $115 billion for transit, an increase of 76% from the current level, Foxx said.
"We've got to get more money into the system or it will fall apart," he said.
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., criticized the plan's reliance on $240 billion from a mandatory one-time tax on accumulated corporate foreign earnings to fund the Grow America Act. Another $238 billion would come from federal gasoline and diesel taxes.
The corporate tax reform windfall could fund federal transportation spending for six years, but that money won't be available when it is time to draft the next highway bill, she said.
"We're getting away from the user-fee basis of the gasoline tax," she said. "How do we fund transportation into the future?"
Federal highway funding has not been on a user-fee basis for years, Foxx said, pointing out the 32 short-term extensions and $63 billion of general fund transfers to the Highway Trust Fund since 2008.
"We've got to get more money into the system or it will fall apart," Foxx said. "We're not shirking from a long-term revenue fix. We're willing to listen to whatever ideas come out of Congress."
Foxx's request for increased transportation funding came a day after the Congressional Budget Office issued a report putting public spending on transportation and water infrastructure at $416 billion in 2014.
State and local governments accounted for $320 billion of the 2014 total, with $96 billion by the federal government, CBO said in the report released Monday.
Transportation spending totaled $279 billion in 2014, with $165 billion going to highways.
Total infrastructure spending at all levels increased 44% in 2014 from 2003, but adjusting for inflation resulted in an actual 9% decline, CBO said.
Capital projects received 43% of the funding, with maintenance and operations allocations totaling 57%.
