In recent years, highway legislation has moved well beyond building and maintaining critical interstates. Federal tax dollars are now used to fund bike paths, flowers in medians, museums and other projects. When the federal government is focused on highways, the money is not spent efficiently.
These inefficiencies come in the form of Davis-Bacon wage laws, duplicative federal studies, and excessive permitting and red tape, which drive up costs and slow down projects. Over the last 50 years, the loss of time and money on road projects across the country has snowballed.
Let’s imagine what we could do with the money we’re losing each year. With less red tape, construction would move faster and cost less. With more funding, we could expand and build roads, and connect new communities to each other.
What does that mean for everyday life? With that extra money, your commute might be a little shorter. Maybe you would make it to a few more of your kid’s soccer games. You could spend more time running errands for your family instead of staring at another car’s brake lights. Better highways could also mean access to more affordable housing, helping you connect where you want to live with where you want to work.
Here’s where the Transportation Empowerment Act (H.R. 2716) comes in, which I introduced last Congress and co-sponsored this Congress.
This bill is based on a proposal first crafted by former congressman and now-Governor of Ohio John Kasich – and was supported by a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans. The Transportation Empowerment Act is a plan to reform the bankrupt, messy and unfair federal highway program into an efficient, locally controlled system that improves the quality of life for every driver and commuter in America, while reducing gas taxes and increasing spending on highways at home.
The bill transfers almost all authority over federal highway and transit programs to the states over a five-year period. During this phase out, states will receive block grants that come with vastly fewer federal strings attached. At the same time, the federal gas tax will be lowered to 3.7 cents from the current 18.4 cents. This gives states more flexibility to determine the tax structure that best fits their unique transportation needs.
State dollars would go much further. You would not have unreasonable federal red tape delays. You would not have the extra 10 percent cost that Davis-Bacon rules are estimated to add. States could also learn from each other, compete with each other, and find the most efficient and effective systems.
After all, if the current system worked, states would happily remit all state and local transportation funds to the federal government, and let Washington make all the decisions all the time. In reality, states resist sending additional money to the federal government because it would only subject more of their projects to higher costs and longer delays.
In the end, fewer Washington strings attached would mean more cash going to roads, bridges or whatever a particular state wants to build. And, most importantly, people could spend less time in traffic and more time enjoying life.
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