DALLAS -- Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said he will not vote for the 1,300-page, five-year transportation funding bill released Tuesday by a House and Senate conference committee because it covers the Highway Trust Fund's revenue shortfall with $70 billion from the general fund rather than raise the federal gasoline tax.
"The way the bill (H.R. 22) is paid for is simply irresponsible," said Carper, a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Finance Committee.
"Congress has missed an opportunity to pay for this bill honestly by raising transportation user fees, simply because we lack the courage to ask those who use our nation's transportation system to pay a little more for its upkeep and expansion," he said. "Congress is passing the buck by using a grab bag of budget gimmicks and poaching revenues from unrelated programs for years to come in order to pay for today's transportation needs."
Carper earlier this year proposed a doubling of the 18.4 cent per gallon gasoline tax to cover the HTF's $15 billion per year revenue gap.
The proposed Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act would provide $282.6 billion of core highway and transit funding through fiscal 2020 as well as $11 billion in two programs dedicated to freight-moving highway and rail projects. The gasoline tax and the diesel tax of 24.4 cents per gallon, along with several other taxes dedicated to the HTF, are expected to bring in about $200 billion over the next five years.
Funding in the bill includes $221.6 billion for highway and bridge projects and $61 billion for public transit.
The conference report was signed by 48 of the House members and 10 of the senators on the committee, but not by seven of the conferees -- four senators and three representatives, three of whom were Republicans.
The lack of a permanent funding solution in the FAST Act will only make the shortfall worse in five years, said David Bauer, senior vice president for government relations at the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. ARTBA has advocated for an increase in the gasoline tax to restore the HTF.
"The measure uses a variety of one-time cost savings and non-transportation resources … to support its investment levels over the next five years," Bauer said. "The HTF will be facing another revenue shortfall in roughly four years and the current $15 billion per year gap between what current trust fund receipts can support and existing investment levels will widen."
Another short-term reauthorization of federal transportation funding probably will be needed to give Congress time to pass the FAST Act, Bauer said. The current extension (PL 114-87) will expire at midnight Friday.
The House will consider the transportation bill on Thursday while the Senate may not take up the measure until after the current 14-day reauthorization expires, said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
"We would like to do it this week or first thing next week, which would necessitate an extension," he said.
The proposal would transfer $70 billion of general revenues into the HTF, with $51.9 billion for highways and $18.1 billion for transit. Congress has used almost $75 billion of general fund revenues to supplement the HTF since 2008, most recently with an $8.1 billion move in late May that is expected to keep the fund solvent through the end of 2015.
The revenue offsets in the final bill include $53.3 billion from a surplus account of the Federal Reserve Bank system, $7 billion by reducing the dividend paid by the Fed to its largest members, and $6.2 billion from the sale of 66 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the next 10 years. The offset proposal assumes an average oil price of almost $94 per barrel, or about twice the current market price for domestic crude.
The measure creates two new funding sources for projects aimed at reducing bottlenecks that hinder freight movements.
The new $6.3 billion National Highway Freight Program would provide $1.3 billion per year to states for highway-specific freight projects.
The Nationally Significant Freight & Highway Projects Program would distribute grants totaling $900 million per year to large road and rail infrastructure projects.
