Federal Funding

When Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama balked at the increase in transportation spending recommended by President Obama's 2013 budget, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood did not mince words: "America is one big pothole," he said.

President Obama has released his budget request for the 2013 fiscal year, which includes a proposed $476 billion investment in transportation over six years. High-speed rail, mass transit, and bridge repair would get a big boost under Obama's plan, which is paid for primarily by war savings as America's troop presence is drawn down in Afghanistan.

When the House Ways and Means Committee voted to divert all gas tax revenue away from transit projects, severing transit's only dedicated source of federal funds, they were essentially throwing transit riders under the bus.

The Senate Finance Committee is currently marking up what lawmakers have christened the "Highway Investment, Job Creation and Economic Growth Act of 2012," the final component of the Senate's two-year transportation bill. This portion of the bill, put together by committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT), is responsible for the "pay-for" -- identifying approximately $13 billion in funding needed to align the bill's spending with its revenue. As of yesterday the committee had announced only a little more than $10 billion in "found" revenue.

The last piece of the Senate's two-year transportation reauthorization proposal will be marked up by the Finance Committee tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. The committee was tasked with finding approximately $12 billion to bridge the projected shortfall of the Highway Trust Fund over the life of the bill. So far, according to a summary released by Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), they have found a little over $10.4 billion:

Today at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, four members of New York's congressional delegation joined the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in decrying House GOP efforts to drastically alter how the federal government supports transit in cities.

If the Transportation Research Board annual meeting were a music festival, the headline act would have been yesterday's panel of six secretaries of transportation, including Ray LaHood (the incumbent) and Alan Boyd (the first to ever hold the post). As headliners go, they were a bit of a downer: They told a standing-room-only crowd that they're all pretty worried about America's ability to deliver the transportation policy the country needs.

This week marks the Transportation Research Board's 91st annual meeting, a time when thousands of experts and professionals from across the country descend on the nation's capital to share their ideas, discoveries, theories, and fears with their colleagues in the transportation field. This year, falling in line with political rhetoric from both parties that ties transportation to job creation, the conference's theme is "putting innovation and people to work." Presumably, "innovation" refers in part to the fact that there is little to no agreement on how to pay for transportation investments at the federal level.

When government types start to talk about expanding infrastructure, you’re likely to hear the phrase “public-private partnership” thrown around a lot. PPPs (or P3s, or 3Ps) are one of the “innovative financing tools” that policymakers love to hold up as a way to expedite expensive infrastructure projects that taxpayers want but aren’t willing to pay for – or that elected officials want to build but won’t take any political risks to support.