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Follow TURFSenate punts on long-term fix to federal highway program
By Terri Hall
March 19, 2012
With the next continuing resolution for the federal highway program coming to an end March 31, lawmakers in the nation’s Capitol have been scrambling to address systemic shortfalls in the Federal Highway Trust Fund before they run out of time. Though making some structural changes to consolidate programs, the U.S. Senate chose to kick the can down the road once more, passing a short-term extension bill, S 1813 also referred to as MAP-21, last week.
Meanwhile John Mica (R-FL), Chair of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has been pushing for a 5 year bill and a more long-term solution, but has struggled to gain the votes necessary for passage. They have until March 31 to either pass the House bill or take up the Senate bill and, in either scenario, they’ll need to work out the differences in conference at lightning speed.
Both versions would increase -- by nearly ten times -- the borrowing of money we don’t have from the Federal Reserve to loan to states through the TIFIA program. TIFIA loans gets doled out almost exclusively to private corporations in contracts called public private partnerships (or P3s) in order to federally subsidize an unaccountable toll road boom across the country. The first TIFIA loan went to a private corporation in a P3, and the project went bankrupt less than three years after the ill-conceived toll road opened, forcing the taxpayers to write-down nearly $80 million.
Most notable in the Senate version are two provisions authored by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D - NM). One limits the tax breaks for the private corporations in these controversial P3s, and the other reduces the amount of federal dollars a state receives if the state chooses to sell-off the public’s highways to private toll operators using P3s. Bingaman’s goal is to remove incentives for states to turn sovereign public highways into unaccountable cash cows in the hands of private corporations.
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