Federal Highway Administration head Victor Mendez drives a Caterpillar grader in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Last night the U.S. Senate went along with the House of Representatives and agreed not to shut down the FAA because its authority to impose excise taxes on airline tickets had expired. It was the 22nd extension of existing taxes since the underlying bill supporting the FAA expired four years ago, and it only lasts four months before the bickering over taxes starts anew.
The Senate also approved a six month extension to a surface transportation law without addressing the underlying problem of a bankrupt Highway Trust fund. Federal gasoline taxes that support the highway system, – 18.4 cents per gallon – have not been increased since 1993 as the population expands and road use and repair costs go up. (See Bankrupt Highway Trust Fund Could Send One Million More Taxpaying Workers to Unemployment Lines and Senate Dithers as Highway Trust Fund Goes Broke)
House Republicans closed parts of the FAA for two weeks this summer when they refused to extend the FAA’s taxing ability as they left Washington, DC for a month-long, taxpayer financed, vacation. Roughly 4,000 FAA workers were sent home and more than 200 airport construction and safety projects stopped, affecting tens of thousands of workers as the official – and understated – national unemployment rate was above 9%. As a result, the federal government lost about $400 million in airline ticket taxes because airlines no longer had a legal means to collect the fees, or the airlines that did collect the taxes simply pocketed the money.
The latest failure to put in place long term solutions for revenue problems came as a New York Times/CBS News poll showed Congressional approval ratings at a mere 12%, tying the abysmal record low recorded in October of 2008 as the ongoing financial crisis and Great Recession under Republican President Bush was unfolding with Congress doing nothing but posturing.
A paltry 6% of registered voters now say that most members of Congress have earned re-election. And in what is shaping up to be an election firing for any incumbent, 84% agree that it’s time to give somebody else a chance – a historic low for the New York Times/CBS poll. Dissatisfaction with Congress runs deep across both parties; with more than 8 in 10 of both Republicans and Democrats saying it’s time to elect new representatives, according to the New York Times.
As it stands now, our country needs to invest about $2.2 trillion through 2014 just to maintain our national infrastructure in a state of good repair, according to an American Society of Civil Engineers Report issued when the President Obama assumed office, but neither party is willing to approve the taxes and user fees needed to do so. (See also DOT Announces $417.3 Million in Grants for Highway Projects )
