Foxx to testify at House transport funding hearing

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is scheduled to testify at House hearing about boosting U.S. infrastructure funding next week. 

Foxx is listed as a witness at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on Wednesday about extending an infrastructure funding measure that is currently scheduled to expire in May. 

Foxx took lawmakers to task for passing only a series of short-term highway funding packages since a 2005 measure expired in 2009, during a recent appearance at a Senate hearing about the infrastructure funding topic.  

“Last year we sent Congress a comprehensive multiyear proposal, the GROW AMERICA Act, which included 350 pages of precise policy prescriptions and substantial funding growth, all focused on the future,” he said during a Jan. 28 hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  

“What America received in response was a ten-month extension with flat funding, which while averting a catastrophe falls short of meeting the countries needs,” Foxx continued. “It was not the first short-term measure, or patch, that has been passed. It was by my count, the 32nd in the last six years. And as a former mayor, I can tell you these short-term measures are doing to America what the state [Department of Transportation] says they’re doing in Tennessee, literally killing their will to build.”

Lawmakers have introduced a series of bills this week to boost the nation’s transportation spending, and the idea of increasing the 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax to help pay for construction projects has been discussed.

The gas tax, which has not been increased since 1993, has struggled to keep pace with infrastructure expenses in recent years as cars have become more fuel efficient.

The tax at the pump, which predates the highway system by about 20 years, brings in about $34 billion per year. The federal government typically spends about $50 billion per year on road and transit projects, and transportation advocates have maintained that the larger figure is only enough to maintain the current state of U.S. infrastructure.

The House Transportation Committee said in a statement that the hearing with Foxx will be the “first in a two-part series of hearings on surface transportation reauthorization, with the second hearing scheduled for later this month.” 

The current transportation funding bill, which included about $11 billion for infrastructure projects, is scheduled to expire on May 31.