It was the 33rd short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund over the past six years, according to Rep. Peter Welch’s office.
This week, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., blasted Congress for the short-term patch, which extended funding that had been set to expire May 31 for another two months, setting up another deja vu in July. All three members of Congress support finding a long-term solution and Welch has circulated a petition to block anymore stalemates.
“As Congress stumbles from extension to extension, so does our workforce and our country’s ability to maintain and enhance our roads, bridges, rails and airports,” said Leahy, who said his Senate committee on Environment and Public Works had “committed to marking up a long-term version” of the bill, and added that he hoped the body’s Republican majority would prioritize financing it.
“Rural states like Vermont, where the construction season is short and where the list of critical infrastructure projects is long, cannot afford to let another summer pass without making real progress on moving forward in finding a way to sustain the Highway Trust Fund that protects all of our transportation priorities,” Leahy said in a statement.
The day after his presidential campaign announcement, Sanders emphasized the importance the bill’s reauthorization would have on jobs and how delays could hurt national infrastructure and the overall economy.
“Congress has had six months to work on a long-term surface transportation bill, but the best the Senate leadership could do was kick the can down the road for two months,” he said in an email comment. “This is embarrassing, especially when you consider the American Society of Civil Engineers says we must double our rate of investment just to get our roads, bridges and transit systems to an acceptable level of repair.”
Sanders said his office was working with the Senate Transportation Committee to draft the long-term bill, “to repair our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.” He said he feared Republican lawmakers would stymie the effort though, in light of a “fiercely partisan” budget resolution that cuts transportation funding by 40 percent over a 10-year period.
“At a time when real unemployment is 11 percent, their budget would eliminate more than 2.8 million jobs in the transportation sector. That is simply absurd. We should be making a major investment in our infrastructure, creating the millions of jobs our economy needs,” Sanders said.
Welch’s petition demands a long-term solution by summer’s end, or as construction season winds down. The bill’s reauthorization extension expires July 31. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s “Highway Trust Fund Ticker,” starting Aug. 1 all reimbursements for state projects will be restricted to what cash flow is available in the fund, with insolvency reached by the end of August.
“By the end of the summer, the Highway Trust Fund will be insolvent and our nation will again be left without a long-term transportation plan. We will not support yet another short-term patch to fund our nation’s infrastructure needs,” the petition, which was co-written by Jim Renacci, R-Ohio; John Carney, D-Del., and Reid Ribble, R-Wis., states.
“Enough is enough. America cannot afford to have Congress kick the can down the road while our roads and bridges continue to crumble and workers remain idle,” reads the letter, addressed to House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
As a flip-side to the argument, state Rep. Patrick Brennan, R-Colchester, chair of the House Transportation committee, said the state has done well at organizing its summer construction projects. No change to the FY16 construction plans were called for, he said, and the state had a healthy allocation coming.
“We didn’t reprioritize anything, but we were a little nervous. We went as far as what we’re authorized,” he said, meaning, how much the Highway Trust Fund will reimburse in terms of state projects given the allotment that’s earmarked for Vermont. “We used the federal money that we assumed we were going to get. We have to let it play out and see.”
Federal funds make up more than 60 percent of Vermont’s $616 million transportation budget and state officials have been preparing contingency plans.
Brennan said the reauthorization secures more money for Vermont, even if on a temporary or short-term basis, than a new financing or tax-based plan might.
“I don’t think they’re really working toward getting that resolved, to fund transportation properly,” he said, given that the timeline is short, that gas tax revenues continue to decline and no alternatives have been decided upon. “I guess what we’re hoping … we don’t really do too badly, when they reauthorize,” he said. “Because we’re getting a bunch of earmarked money, so those earmarks are still figured into that.”
He made it simpler: By “kicking the can down the road each time and by reauthorizing only for a year or two, or even six months, they go back to what you were receiving in the last federally authorized transportation bill” in 2008.
The trust fund relies on declining federal tax revenues from gasoline and diesel fuel, a per-gallon tax that hasn’t gone up since 1993. If the new bill were to rely on a different funding plan –– one that depends on gas taxes or a distance-driven tax, which is being tested in Oregon – Vermont might not fare as well.
Despite that, Welch’s group of petitioners, which has 34 bipartisan signatories, according to his chief of staff, will refuse to vote for any more short-term solutions.
“Going forward, we will only support a bill that adequately funds America’s pressing infrastructure needs for the next several years. We will vote against another short-term funding extension,” the petition says.
