Federal Funding

There is a pernicious myth among some states that they give more to Washington in the form of gas taxes than they get back in the form of federal transportation funding. A recent rash of federal bailouts -- $35 billion between September 2008 and March 2010 -- ensured a windfall for every state in the union. And yet many still believe that federal bureaucrats are skimming off the top of their payments to give their hard-earned highway money to the liberal subway-riders in New York or something. It's a dangerous lie with serious repercussions.

Looks like we’re heading for a real, honest-to-goodness government shutdown tomorrow due to a childish Congressional food fight over budgets and health care. Already this year, thousands of government employees faced furloughs due to sequestration, and now they're looking at an indefinite unpaid leave. It'll last until Congress can play nice and make a deal on the budget and health care, and who knows when that will be.

Jay Hansen is executive vice president of the National Asphalt Pavement Association. He’s led the organization’s efforts to secure federal highway funding and even convinced the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to install a permanent asphalt pavement exhibit. He says he’s been reading Streetsblog Capitol Hill since it started publishing. I talked to him Friday after the association’s first-ever Washington “fly-in” to strategize about legislation and lobby Congress. T. Carter Ross, NAPA’s Vice President for Communications was also with us.

Deron Lovaas is the federal transportation policy director for NRDC. A version of this article appeared on his blog this morning.

Well here’s a sobering thought: Transit advocates, cyclists and the road lobby have the same talking points these days. All anyone is talking about is how to rescue the Highway Trust Fund from its own fiscal cliff.

I hope you all had a good Labor Day. Streetsblog is back to work today, and you probably are too. But Congress? Not until next week. Every time there's a Monday holiday, Congress takes the whole week off, and they're milking the last moments of their August recess.

A few short hours after the Senate Appropriations Committee passed a $594 billion defense spending bill, Republicans blocked the $54 billion transportation and HUD bill from coming to the floor for a vote. House Republican leadership had blocked its own THUD bill the day before.

While the Senate continues to consider amendments to its transportation budget bill, expected to pass this week, House leadership has canceled a vote on its own version. The bill, which passed the full Appropriations Committee a month ago, was scheduled to hit the floor this week for a vote by the entire House.

Senator Barbara Boxer brought together transportation industry representatives this morning to highlight the damage that would be done to the economy if Congress doesn’t come up with a solution to the impending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund. New CBO estimates, released this week [PDF], project that the fund will be zeroed out by the time MAP-21 expires at the end of Fiscal Year 2014. Boxer says she doesn't intend to wait until the last minute to act.