Transportation Weekly is reporting that a new $75 billion economic stimulus package, to be paid with TARP, is currently in the works for passage early next year. The package will include about $48 billion in new infrastructure spending, including $37.3 billion for the U.S. Department of Transportation under near-identical conditions to those accompanying the $48.1 billion in the first stimulus Act for USDOT. Highways and bridges would get $27.5 billion.
The position here is that Congress should be working to provide a long term solution to transportation funding instead of providing short term band aids that do not adequately address the true infrastructure needs of the country. State transportation departments are cutting projects because adequate funding does not exist in the long term program. The long term program needs to be addressed now.
Stimulus dollars under the rules of last year will only address more bandaid projects.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
An article in the Wall Street Journal today by Christopher Conkey discussed the latest call for an Infrastructure Stimulus as a result of the "Jobs Summit" going on in Washington
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125978948194373437.html
House Transporation Committee Chairman James Oberstar is calling the $69 Billion in new shovel ready projects proposed by AASHTO "a nice down payment" to create and save jobs. The problem is that most of these shovel ready projects are maintenance projects that are light on heavy construction. The real need is for a complete and comprehensive transportation bill that replaces the bill that expired on September 30th. Without this bill, transportation projects that are funded with the regular allocation of dollars are at the mercy of continuing resolutions that give state transportation officials little comfort when planning the projects to bid in 2010.
States began to feel the pinch when fuel prices started rising, leading to a corresponding rise in asphalt and other materials costs. Any annual increases in funding built into the last bill were canceled out by the rise in costs for materials. The result is that state transporatation departments have substantially less money to work with than they did five years ago.
No one likes a tax increase, but the reality is that the Federal Gas Tax has been the same since 1993. This is why the Obama administration is proposing an 18 month extension in the bill that woulg get Congress past the midterm elections to raise the Gas Tax. What our country needs right now is a Congress to govern, and present to us the American people what we need to do. People are smart enough to absorb the facts when presented. Time to make the case for a fully funded transportation bill to continue the importatn part of the economy that designs and builds the highways and bridges of our country.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125978948194373437.html
House Transporation Committee Chairman James Oberstar is calling the $69 Billion in new shovel ready projects proposed by AASHTO "a nice down payment" to create and save jobs. The problem is that most of these shovel ready projects are maintenance projects that are light on heavy construction. The real need is for a complete and comprehensive transportation bill that replaces the bill that expired on September 30th. Without this bill, transportation projects that are funded with the regular allocation of dollars are at the mercy of continuing resolutions that give state transportation officials little comfort when planning the projects to bid in 2010.
States began to feel the pinch when fuel prices started rising, leading to a corresponding rise in asphalt and other materials costs. Any annual increases in funding built into the last bill were canceled out by the rise in costs for materials. The result is that state transporatation departments have substantially less money to work with than they did five years ago.
No one likes a tax increase, but the reality is that the Federal Gas Tax has been the same since 1993. This is why the Obama administration is proposing an 18 month extension in the bill that woulg get Congress past the midterm elections to raise the Gas Tax. What our country needs right now is a Congress to govern, and present to us the American people what we need to do. People are smart enough to absorb the facts when presented. Time to make the case for a fully funded transportation bill to continue the importatn part of the economy that designs and builds the highways and bridges of our country.
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