Congress has until the end of July to either provide a short-term patch to the federal transportation trust fund that gets us to the end of the year, or figure out where it will find the needed dollars to pass a long-term bill. Let’s check in and see how they are doing:
In the past couple of weeks, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing focused on long-term funding for the Highway Trust Fund. The chairman of the committee made it clear that he does not support an increase in the federal gas tax. He gave indications that he prefers to explore repatriation of overseas profits as a way to generate the necessary revenue to shore up the Highway Trust Fund. The chairman also felt that Congress will be forced to make yet another transfer from the general fund at the end of July in order prevent the Highway Trust Fund from going belly up.
A day later, the Senate Finance Committee met to look at options for long-term transportation funding. The Senate Finance Committee chair stated that he doubted an increase in the gas tax could be passed. He also discounted the idea of repatriation being used to fund transportation projects.
Last week, Transportation Secretary Foxx called on Congress to adopt a long-term transportation funding bill that significantly increases transportation funding. He also reintroduced a dashboard on the DOT website that provides a monthly snapshot of how close the nation’s transportation is to insolvency.
So, let’s summarize. We are only a few weeks from the trust fund being insolvent and there is no agreement on how much or where the money will come from for either a short-term or long-term solution. You can follow the status of the trust fund via the chart below.
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