The House and Senate reconcile their differences on highway funding.
Holy smokes! We are on the verge of an honest-to-god, long-term infrastructure bill.
Negotiators from the House and Senate have been working to reconcile differences between the competing versions put forth by the two chambers in recent months. And now they’ve reached an agreement, say news reports.
The high hurdle to an infrastructure bill that lasts longer than a few months has always been the funding. What would pay for it? The traditional stream – the gas tax, which hasn’t moved from 18 cents a gallon in over 20 years – simply doesn’t create enough revenue anymore, and lawmakers have been loath to raise it.
But Congress got creative with the funding arrangement, and now there’s money! $305 billion over five years. And that alone is substantial, as the Wall Street Journal noted:
The accord is notable for a Congress that has spent years enacting short-term patches. Since 2008, Congress has kept the fund afloat with temporary measures transferring more than $70 billion from the U.S. Treasury because of an inability to agree on how to generate more money for the fund, such as through raising the gas tax.
Though the funding formula will certainly not please every constituency, we consider it a step in the right direction. As demonstrated by Duke University researchers, dedicating $100 billion annually to infrastructure improvements would create a heckuva lot of jobs. If you think that much money every year on infrastructure fixes is too much money, America’s civil engineers say it’s not nearly enough.
Congress isn’t the only one thinking about filling potholes. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, introduced legislation that would spend a load on our roads, bridges, and rails, and frontrunner Hillary Clinton announced a substantial one of her own over the weekend. Clinton's would put another $250 billion into direct federal spending on infrastructure projects, and dedicate $25 billion in seed money for a national infrastructure bank, designed to attract private capital to such projects.
A noteworthy part of her infrastructure bank proposal? It will operate with “domestic sourcing requirements,” meaning any project it funds will largely be Made in America.
That’s important. It’s the kind of policy that helps the United States make sure that American tax dollars spent on American roads and bridges support American jobs.