There is no “infrastructure crisis” in this country, other than the one created in Washington, writes Stephen Moore in the Washington Post. No one doubts for a moment that our broken system of transportation funding is in need of reform, but the big canard here with the highway trust fund is that the government is running out of money to prevent bridges and highway infrastructure from collapsing.
The federal gasoline tax of 18.3 cents a gallon and other fuel taxes raise some $35 billion a year — more than enough to pay for roads and bridges and highways. The problem is about 20 cents of every dollar raised isn’t used to fund roads. Rather it goes to transit projects and bike paths and other pork. Unions make out like bandits because of the Davis Bacon Act that inflates wages and salaries on federal construction projects.
The worst feature of the highway bill robbery bill is that it could sneak in a new lease on life for the Export Import Bank. Republicans would be surrendering to the corporate cronyism lobby at a time when we should be pushing companies like Caterpillar and Boeing off the dole.
Republicans told voters in 2014 that they were against corporate welfare funding, but if they don’t repeal the Davis Bacon Act, which raises the cost of highway construction projects by 25-40%, and see to it that every dollar of gas tax money goes for roads, warns Mr. Moore, they deserve to lose Congress in 2016. Read Moore here.
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