AWOL on Infrastructure

A couple of Sundays ago, the “60 Minutes” news program devoted its lead segment to the problems confronting the nation’s transportation infrastructure. For those in the field, the segment didn’t break much new ground (no pun intended). But it was interesting that not only was there no on-air interview of Transport Secretary Anthony Foxx, but the reporter, Steve Kroft, didn’t even mention if Foxx was asked to comment.

Perhaps it was a good thing for the Obama Administration that no current official spoke on the subject. It’s unlikely they would have much to boast about. Nearly six years into its tenure, the Administration deserves a solid “F” for the way it has led (or not led) in the effort to fund improvements to the nation’s transportation infrastructure. The failing grade is amplified by the amount of rhetoric President Obama has spilled in touting infrastructure spending as a vehicle for job creation and for boosting the nation’s economic competitiveness.

Congress, of course, has played an important role in this mess. Yet transport funding is traditionally one area both parties can agree upon, especially when so much has been at stake since the Great Recession. It takes Presidential leadership to manage the process. However, it has not been delivered. The $787 billion stimulus bill signed in 2009 allocated a mere $48 billion to transport funding. For the next five years, the Administration effectively sat on its hands as Congress enacted stopgap bill after stopgap bill to keep road projects alive. In early 2012, efforts by Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) to craft a long-term spending measure were criticized by then-Transport Secretary Ray LaHood as the worst bill he’d ever seen in all his years in public life. Yet the White House failed to come up with legislation of its own. When Congress, against all odds, sent a multi-year bill to President Obama’s desk in July, it was legislation fashioned with no executive branch input.

Finally in early 2014, the White House proposed funding legislation. It has, to this point, gone nowhere. This fall, the can was kicked down the road again, this time until May when the current short-term funding law expires. It what might mark a new low in legislative legerdemain, the stopgap funding was financed in part by the financial “smoothing” of corporate pension contributions, allowing companies to forego pension contributions on the front end so more taxable revenue would be available to capture and funnel into the Highway Trust Fund.

The Administration wrings its hands about how to pay for transport projects. The answer is in front of its face: Raising the federal fuel tax for the first time since 1993. Shippers and truckers support it. Big and small businesses support it. Road builders support it. Even the AFL-CIO supports it. But Congress is too scared to act, and the Administration shows no courage to lead because it is just as scared.

The clock will inexorably tick towards May. Facing no more election cycles, President Obama should put the hammer down and persuade Congress to pass at a minimum a four-year spending bill that includes a sizable increase in the federal fuels tax that has been a long time in coming. With a Presidential election cycle set to start in earnest in late 2015, the spring and summer may be as far as the window will remain open.

If the President needs inspiration, he should harken back to 1956. Then, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the face of predictions that in a Presidential election year a Democratic Congress would never approve a plan sought by a GOP president to create an interstate highway system, continued to urge approval and worked with Congress to reach compromises that made it work. The President signed the “Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956” into law on June 29.

If President Obama can follow in Ike’s footsteps, then the sorry neglect of the previous six years will largely be forgotten.