GOP chairman, Foxx to hold Twitter town hall on transport funding

House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx are planning to hold a Twitter town hall this week to discuss the possibility of boosting U.S. infrastructure funding this year. 

The online event, which is scheduled for Wednesday and has been dubbed “#StuckInTraffic,” comes as lawmakers are attempting to find a funding source for a new piece of legislation on infrastructure this year. 

The current transportation funding bill, which includes only $11 billion worth of projects, is scheduled to expire on May 31.

{mosads}Foxx is scheduled to testify at a House Transportation Committee hearing on a potential a long-term extension of the measure. 

Lawmakers are searching for a way to pay for a long-term transportation funding extension for years, turning in recent times to other areas of the federal budget to pay for temporary patches. There is little consensus on a permanent funding source than can supplement the revenue collected by 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax, which has been used to fill the Transportation Department’s Highway Trust Fund since the 1950s.

The gas tax, which predates the highway system by about 20 years, hasn’t increased since 1993. It has struggled since to keep pace with infrastructure expenses as cars have become more fuel-efficient.

The tax at the pump brings in about $34 billion per year. The federal government typically spends about $50 billion per year on road and transit projects.

Transportation advocates have argued that raising the tax would be the easiest way to close the gap. Most lawmakers and Obama administration officials, including Shuster and Foxx, have been reluctant to ask drivers to pay more at the pump to improve the country’s infrastructure, however.

Foxx said last week in an interview with PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show that he did not think the gas tax was a viable solution to the nation’s infrastructure funding problems, even if it were increased later this year. 

“Using the fuel tax … was able to help us build the infrastructure to have the highway system we have today,” he said. “But today, we have two problems. One is we have a legacy system that has to be maintained. And we also have fast-growing areas of the country that need new capacity. So we have both problems that we didn’t have back in 1956.” 

Shuster has also said recently that Congress is unlikely to pass an increase in the federal gas tax this year. 

Instead, he said a deal to boost U.S. infrastructure funding will likely have to find an alternative source of revenue, potentially as part of a broader tax reform package. 

“I know the popular thing that a lot of people are talking about is the gas tax. But I just don’t believe the votes are there in the Congress at this point to do that,” Shuster said in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington last month. 

“It seems that … the No. 1 source that’s being talked about is this repatriation of funds,” Shuster continued. “So as we go through this process and tax reform, it’ll be part of tax reform. We’ll figure out how to get there.” 

The Obama administration has suggested using revenue from taxing overseas corporate profits, known as repatriation, to pay for a bill that would spend $478 billion over the next six years on boosting infrastructure. 

House leaders have expressed interest in extending the transportation funding this year, but Republican leaders in the lower chamber have not offered a specific proposal with a definitive funding amount yet.