GOP looks for answers on highway funding

Lawmakers in the Republican-led House are looking for a way to pay for a new transportation funding bill with just two months to go before the scheduled expiration of most federal infrastructure programs. 

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, which is set to expire in May. 

The hearing will be the panel’s second meeting about the bill this year, as lawmakers search for a way to finance an extension of the federal government’s infrastructure funding. 

{mosads}Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has told lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House that it is important to pass a long-term bill that would boost U.S. infrastructure funding for the first time in nearly a decade.

“Our country is too great to allow our infrastructure to fall apart,” he said during a Feb. 11 Transportation Committee hearing. 

“We must do something,” Foxx continued. “At a time when we should be building more, we’re building less. Instead of saying ‘build, build, build,’ Congress has been saying ‘stop.’ ” 

Lawmakers have approved only a series of temporary infrastructure funding patches since a 2005 transportation bill expired in 2009, including an $11 billion measure scheduled to expire on May 31. 

The Department of Transportation has said its Highway Trust Fund will run out of money without an extension of the infrastructure funding bill. The fund, which is used to pay for most infrastructure projects, takes in revenue from the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax. 

The gas tax has not been increased since 1993 and has struggled to keep pace with rising construction costs, as cars have become more fuel-efficient. 

Lawmakers have introduced a series of bills recently to extend the expiring transportation funding measure, but they have not yet coalesced around a specific funding source. The idea of nearly doubling the federal gas tax to help pay for construction projects has been discussed, but many lawmakers are reluctant to ask drivers to pay more at the pump. 

Additional proposals from the White House and lawmakers like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) rely on the idea of taxing overseas corporate revenue through a process known as “repatriation” to pay for a new round of road projects.  

Lawmakers are scheduled to hear testimony at Tuesday’s hearing from state transportation officials from North Carolina, Utah and Wyoming.

State lawmakers in Utah have voted to increase their 24.50-cent-per-gallon local gas tax by 5 cents beginning next year to boost its infrastructure spending as federal transportation funding has dried up. 

Transportation advocates in Washington have pointed to the willingness of Republican states like Utah to raise their own gas tax as evidence that a hike of the national levy would be politically palatable this year. 

“Republicans can vote to increase the gas tax,” Association of Equipment Manufacturers spokesman Michael O’Brien said in an email to The Hill last week. “We’ve seen that repeatedly this spring as GOP legislatures in Iowa, South Dakota, Utah and more have voted to do so.” 

Conservative groups in Washington have made clear that they would consider an increase in the federal fuel levy a tax hike, however.

“Rather than raise the federal gas tax, a better policy would be to repeal the federal tax and let states pay for their own road projects,” the Heritage Action group said in a blog post on its website. “Devolving transportation projects back to the states will ensure that gas tax money is used for the highest value-added projects.”

The gas tax has been the main source of transportation funding since its inception in the 1930s, but the lack of increases since 1993 have sapped its buying power.

While the tax hike has backing from business associations and unions, opposition from conservative groups such as Heritage Action and the Club for Growth has caused GOP leaders in the House to suggest it is a nonstarter.

The federal government typically spends about $50 billion per year on transportation projects, but the gas tax will only bring in $34 billion annually without an increase.