Tag: HTF: Page 25

Roadbuilding

Fifty-state ‘Vehicle Miles Traveled’ tax/fee/charge study proposed

Will your vehicle one day feel like a taxi cab? Oregon Democrat representative Earl Blumenauer has introduced legislation that would fund a 50-state Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) pilot program to examine a new source of highway funding.  The legislation calls on the Secretary of the Treasury to undertake a series of studies to demonstrate the viability […]

December 17, 2012

Roadbuilding

Whispering the T Word

TAX! Nothing like shouting a three-letter word ending in X to get your attention. But no, we’re not talking income tax. The gas tax is back on a table in Washington. The 18.3 cents a gallon tax, un-indexed and unchanged in almost 20 years, is the now inadequate basis of our highway system funding. It’s […]

December 5, 2012

Roadbuilding

So, how are you guys splitting the tab?

It’s not as if everyone sat around the table looking the other way when the waiter came with the bill. We know the size of the bill to fund what we must do for our transportation infrastructure and we know Johnny Washington isn’t generously reaching all the way down into his pockets. We’ve heard the […]

November 6, 2012

Roadbuilding

It’s Still Raining Obvious, Congressman.

FLASHBACK — Here’s a paper from 2003. I stumbled on it and deja vu! It’s simple title is A Dozen Reasons for Raising Gasoline Taxes. Reading it is weird: the 12 arguments are not old.  All the way through the winding down of SAFETEA-LU and the nine clumsy extensions  leading up to MAP-21, raising gas […]

October 12, 2012

Home

How much life does the Highway Trust Fund have left?

We know the simplicity of it. The Highway Trust Fund is steadily running out of money. Congress, so set on look-at-me brinkmanship, has very little time to do anything, but that doesn’t seem to create any sense of urgency. So just how much time is there? Based on its mid-year review of the federal budget, […]

August 31, 2012

Home

The Other Side of the Glass Door

I had a dog once that loved to sunbath indoors, resting beside a sliding glass patio door. Outside would come strolling the neighborhood tortoiseshell cat, flop herself down on the other side of the glass and languidly do her own sunbathing. My dog went nuts, barking, scratching, clawing and demonstrating 50 ways of tearing a […]

July 2, 2012

Construction Equipment

Let’s say reauthorization was a simple thing

It could be a really interesting week in the surface transportation reauthorization debate in the Congressional conference committee. If you step way, way back from it, it’s possible to argue that the basics of an agreement are there on the one hand for a clean, sensible, no frills, hard-working bill — and a series of […]

June 10, 2012

Construction Equipment

FY13 funding for DOT released. Ouch!

The House Appropriations Committee has released the fiscal year 2013 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development funding bill. Apparently the old adage that the first cut is the deepest isn’t always true. All of the proposed cuts hurt. But there is 39.1B from the Highway Trust Fund for the Federal Highway program (until a reauthorization bill […]

June 6, 2012

Business

Drive Now, Pay Later.

Interesting, basic approach to the argument for borrowing to build/maintain/repair our transportation infrastructure in the New York Times. Written by a Cornell University economics professor, Robert H. Frank. Agree or disagree he makes a fairly basic argument. And clarity from any point of view in this debate is actually quite refreshing. May we regress to […]

June 5, 2012

Roadbuilding

The link that is not missing, and Shakespeare 116

So extension number nine appears inevitable. House Transportation and Infrastructure committee chairman John Mica says its likely to be a three month extension. It will allow the House Republicans to come up with a bill of their own to pass the House (something they have not been able to do to date) , of unknown […]

March 21, 2012

Roadbuilding

Running out of gas money

A new Congressional Budget Office report says that the Highway Trust Fund may be empty by fiscal year 2014. According to The Hill’s transportation blog the CBO report projects the highway trust to have $12 billion at the end of the current fiscal year, which began last July, and a $3 billion balance  in the […]

February 1, 2012

Roadbuilding

Ladies and Gentlemen, a (draft) reauthorization

Really? We have waited and waited and waited (eight times) for a new surface transportation bill – quick, who won the Super Bowl the last year of SAFETEA-LU) — with details (there was of course a strong bill bill from Democrat Jim Oberstar, the previous leader of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee). Current committee […]

January 31, 2012