The Highway Trust Fund was set up during the Eisenhower administration to build the Interstate highway system. It did a good job, and by 1985 we had excellent highways running the length and breadth of the land. The federal gasoline tax paid for all this.
Now that the Interstate system is built, the Highway Trust Fund is doled out to the state highway departments to maintain the Interstates. And to do favors, like the favor Congress did for good old Tip O'Neill upon his retirement. That favor was the Boston Big Dig, which soaked up $14 billion, of other states tax money, to produce some very nice real estate in down town Boston. It didn't improve traffic flow, but Boston (and only Boston) is much prettier now.
The Highway Trust fund is running dry now and the road contractors, highway departments, and the newsies are crying for more funding. The Trust Fund administrator is threatening to reduce payments by August this year. Horrors. End of the world. We MUST pour more money down this rat hole. Our senator, Jeanne Shaheen, is pressing for a federal gas tax hike to pump up the Highway Trust Fund, and to round out the state gas tax hike Maggie Hassan just blessed us with.
Better, would be to shut down the Highway Trust Fund altogether. Lay off all the bureaucrats who run it. Cancel the Federal gasoline tax. Let the states, who do the roadwork, pay for road maintanance out of state funds. The states could even hike their gas taxes if needed. With the Federal gas tax removed, the states could take a much bigger bite without raising the price of gas.
The money would be better managed if the states had to raise it them selves. If you have to pay for it out of your own pocket, you only do essential projects. If Uncle Sam showers money on you, you go out and spend it quick, whether you need it or not. If you don't spend all the free money, Uncle won't give any more next year. Despite Obama's disbelief, the ARE shovel ready projects to soak up free money right now. Up here we can always repave I93.
The Highway Trust Fund is just a batch of free money, getting poured down rat holes. We ought to shut it off, for good.
2 comments:
It doesn't help that a lot of those funds also go to subsidize mass transit, something the fund was not meant to do.
The fund as it is gives the feds too much power, giving them control over where those funds go and 'punishing' states that won't do as the feds tell them to do. A perfect example of that is seat belts.
The feds were going to withhold highway funds from states that did not pass mandatory seat belt use laws. New Hampshire is the only holdout, seeing as most people were already using seat belts without a law telling them to do so. In fact, seat belt usage here is higher than in most states with seat belt laws, a stat used by the state to prove no law was needed, at least for adults. The compromise was a law passed that mandated minors must be belted and New Hampshire got its highway funds.
Run the money around between various levels of government, and each level will skim some of it out. Less skimming would happen, and more money would get to NH roads, if the NH gas tax money went to NH directly, instead of going up to Washington, getting skimmed, getting tapped for the Big Dig, getting tapped for greenie pipe dreams.
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