Congress Officials Offer Mixed Future For Highway Builders Hopes On TEA-21 Provisions
NEW YORK, Oct. 28--House and Senate transportation officials hold out doubts that a proposed 2¢ fuel tax increase that would pump up federal highway funding by $5 billion a year to $60 billion in 2009 will pass Congress in fiscal year 2003. But the Capital Hill representatives promised members of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association Monday at their midyear meeting in New York City that legislators would work to speed up permission to use new building technology, streamline environmental processes and smooth out revenue alignment discrepancies. "Tax increases are going to be hard to push through," said Martin Whittmer, acting deputy chief of staff for U.S. DOT Secretary Norman Mineta. "The war on terrorism is competing for funds."
ARTBA has been advocating a "pay-as-you-go" system that would collect only the amount of user fee revenue necessary in a given year to cover the federal government's cash outlays for the highway and mass transit programs. Under the current budgeting of trust fund revenue, user revenue is "warehoused" in the Highway Trust Fund for up to seven years before it is spent, ARTBA points out. It also advocates adjusting each year's gas tax rate according to the revenue of the previous year.