By the time the readers of Roads & Bridges magazine see this article, Congress should have enacted the largest public works bill since the 1956 legislation that established the Interstate Highway System. The bill I refer to is the Economic Recovery and Jobs Creation Act, which includes a substantial new chunk of federal funds to begin reconstructing our nation’s roads and bridges.
As important as this short-term stimulus legislation is, however, the future of the transportation construction industry truly rests with the reauthorization of our nation’s surface transportation program. Some have already suggested that enacting such a large economic stimulus bill will allow Congress to defer action to reauthorize the federal-aid highway program. The sad truth is that if this happens, the risk to the federal-aid highway program would be great.
First, most highway projects, by their very nature, are built over multiple construction seasons. State transportation departments and local governments need a multiyear reauthorization to prioritize and plan projects. For the transportation construction industry, a multiyear reauthorization bill allows for better market forecasting and anticipation of business cycles. Putting the federal-aid highway program funding levels on a year-by-year cycle—subject to an acrimonious budget debate in Washington, D.C., every year—would result in very little confidence in highway funding beyond one year for both state departments of transportation and the industry.
However, there is even a greater risk. While the stimulus bill is largely a blank check to create jobs and restore confidence in the American economy, the programs authorized by the surface transportation legislation are significantly larger and must be paid for. Many financial experts are already predicting that because of slumping gas tax receipts, the Highway Trust Fund will again run out of revenues to fully pay for the fiscal 2009 highway program at the SAFETEA-LU-guaranteed funding level of $42 billion.
Simply extending the federal-aid highway program without Congress enacting new revenues to even maintain the program’s current funding levels risks a substantially smaller highway program in 2010 and beyond. That is why NAPA is urging Congress to pass and the president to sign into law a fuel-tax increase with 100% of the revenues applied to the Highway Trust Fund.
Congress must not be allowed to delay the debate beyond 2009 on funding the next surface transportation legislation. Given the huge need to rehabilitate our highways and bridges across the nation and the lack of funding (even if one counts the highway funding in the economic stimulus bill) to bring our surface transportation infrastructure up to even a good state of repair, it is in the best interest of the country to have this debate now. Otherwise, the 44% share that the federal government provides for capital highway and bridge construction is at great risk. Delaying legislation that would increase revenues to pay for rebuilding and constructing highways and bridges would certainly lead to a smaller program and perhaps eliminate the federal share altogether.
NAPA has worked hard with our industry partners to support enactment of an economic stimulus bill. Implementing the surface transportation reauthorization legislation also is a top industry priority. NAPA and the transportation construction industry must now turn our advocacy efforts to enacting in a timely fashion a multiyear, well-funded surface transportation reauthorization bill. This will require the full involvement of our industry grassroots as well as our partner associations in Washington, D.C.
Congress has an opportunity to instill a great deal of confidence into the transportation construction marketplace by passing this legislation, but the industry will have to work as never before to make sure the job gets done. Go to http://legislative.hotmix.org to see how you can be an effective advocate for the highway program in 2009. Together, we can make a difference.
