In public policy, success has two ingredients: knowing the right thing to do, and having the political will to carry it out.
In Congress, everybody with any real understanding of transportation policy knows what has to be done: With the Highway Trust Fund running out of money and the gasoline tax having lost roughly half its purchasing power since its last increase in 1993, the gas tax has to be raised by a minimum of 10 cents a gallon.
We cannot fund a modern transportation infrastructure on half the money we were spending 20 years ago. It is mathematically impossible.
Failure to address the bankrupt trust fund means a short-term loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the construction industry as projects are canceled and go unbuilt. Long term, it means the loss of hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs because without constant reinvestment, we lose the ability to move freight and people with the efficiency needed to compete in a global market, where speed and efficiency are mandatory.
We know all this. We simply lack the political will to act on it.
The same situation plagues the transportation debate here in Georgia. Yet another state commission gets underway next week, exploring yet again the three basic facts that are already on the table and perfectly well understood:
1.) Georgia’s economy is more reliant than most on an excellent transportation system. Prior investments in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, MARTA, our ports and a highway system that was once considered one of the best in the country have been the foundation of our prosperity.
2.) We have fallen to 49th per capita in state investment in transportation, a situation that no one with a grip on reality believes can be sustained without crippling the state’s growth. We are living off the legacy of previous generations, and leaving no legacy of our own.
3.) However, Georgia’s political leadership has built its power by encouraging a hostility to everything that government does; it publicly revels in its belief that there is no tax that cannot be cut and certainly no tax that should ever be raised. Many of them know how foolish and destructive that attitude has been, but they lack the courage to challenge it.
And at this point, that’s what it’s about. It’s about guts, it’s about leadership, it’s about risk-taking, or more specifically the lack of those attributes. And maybe I’ve seen this particular circus too many times, but I doubt that as the “Joint Study Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Funding” holds eight meetings around the state between now and Oct. 29, they’re going to find some previously untapped reservoir of political courage that will resolve this problem.
A final note: Among those on the committee will be the presidents of the Metro Atlanta Chamber and the Georgia Chamber. Their goal will be to lobby state elected officials about the necessity of raising revenue for transportation, just as in Washington, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is fighting to bolster the Highway Trust Fund. And while I wish them all luck, it’s worth noting that they have helped to create the virulent anti-tax attitude that now threatens their profitability.
