DALLAS — The proposed 10-month, $11 billion fix that would keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent into mid-2015 will add to uncertainty over the long-term outlook for federal funding, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday.
A short-term extension may be a necessary evil to keep the fund functioning past a potential Aug. 1 shortfall that would curtail payments to states, he said. But Foxx said he fears that the extension to May 31, 2015 passed by the House and being considered in the Senate later this week will be the first of many.
"It's hard to imagine that Congress won't hit the snooze button on this again until crunch time," he said in an address to the National Press Club. "This bill doesn't really fix what's broken."
Cities and states can't plan for long-term projects with only 10 months of federal funding assured, Foxx said.
"This uncertainty is having a chilling effect on new projects at the state and local level," he said. "If you don't plan you can't design, and if you can't design you can't build."
Eleven of his predecessors joined him in an open letter to Congress urging passage of a multi-year, fully funded surface transportation bill with increased investment in infrastructure, Foxx said.
The dozen signers were in office a total of 35 years, serving Democrat and Republican presidents alike.
"We might not agree on a lot of things, but on this one we're all united," Foxx said. "We have to have a long-term transportation program in place and we need it as soon as possible."
In the letter, the 12 said they hope Congress will quickly avert the immediate crisis facing the Highway Trust Fund.
"But we want to be clear: This bill will not 'fix' America's transportation system," the letter said. "For that, we need a much larger and longer-term investment."
Signers include former secretaries Ray LaHood, Mary Peters, Norman Mineta, Rodney Slater, Frederico Peña, Samuel Skinner, Andrew Card, James Burnley, Elizabeth Dole, William Coleman and Alan Boyd.
Congress once routinely passed highway bills that ensured federal funding for four to six years, the letter said.
"Over the past five years, Congress has passed 27 short-term measures," it said." Today, we are more than a decade past the last six-year funding measure."
Foxx declined to say if he thought lawmakers should pass a long-term funding bill during a lame-duck session after the November election, but said President Obama's four-year, $302 billion Grow America Act should be their model.
"The idea that Congress can't pass a multi-year highway bill is the biggest self-fulfilling prophecy in American politics, and it is killing out transportation system softly," Foxx said.
"The president's bill is designed to be passed by this Congress," he said. "It stabilizes the Highway Trust Fund without raising the gasoline tax and is funded with pro-growth tax reforms that prevent companies from moving their profits overseas."
Stalled political progress on federal highway funding and a hard winter hasn't slowed down transportation, Fitch said in a report released Monday. The sector is holding steady with a stable outlook, said senior director Seth Lehman in the mid-year analysis.
"That said, positive sector movement is unlikely, though credit-by-credit adjustments may be necessary," Lehman said.
Motorists are traveling again after mileage slumped during the recession, the Fitch sector update said. The report cites recent data from the Federal Highway Authority that showed national driving trends stabilizing with an 0.8% increase in vehicles miles traveled in 2014.
Fitch lowered its estimate for growth in U.S. gross domestic product in 2014 to 2% from an earlier 2.8% outlook.
