Highway Trust Fund(Broke) ‘Patch’ Uses TSA Fees to Fund Roads (Yes, Seriously)
Michael Sargent
DailySignal.com
July 15, 2015
Today the House will take up a short-term “patch” measure to shore up the Highway Trust Fund, which is set to dip below critical levels at the end of the month. The patch would keep the fund afloat through December by transferring $8.1 billion from the Treasury into the Highway Trust Fund.
The measure is intended to buy members more time to devise a longer-term proposal that would likely use revenues from a tax on corporations’ overseas profits—known as repatriation—to cover the $90 billion needed for a six-year bill.
The measure is the latest installment—the 34th since 2008, in fact—in a series of short-term measures used to address the Highway Trust Fund’s chronic overspending. The trust fund, fueled primarily by taxes on gas and diesel, shells out about $50 billion annually for federal highway and transit projects. This year, the trust fund will spend $13 billion more than it receives in revenues. That deficit is expected to grow to $22 billion in 10 years, resulting in a $168 billion cumulative shortfall by 2025.
The House’s current plan—using an $8 billion patch to open up the door for a repatriation proposal—is fiscally irresponsible and bad transportation policy. It would keep in place a broken system while violating the “user pays” principle, which calls for the users of transportation to pay for the costs—the foundation of highway funding since 1956—by using unrelated revenues to fund transportation projects.
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