Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/565622
September 2015 | EquipmentWorld.com 90 T his must be what it's like for sports- writers during Super Bowl week: Every story that can be written has been written a hundred times, every arcane rock of trivia turned over and painted, every fact fought over and parsed to the tenth power … and yet, the event is so big, so oxygen-consuming, there is nothing else to talk about. So it is now, if your journalistic beat is roads and bridges. Other important things are going on every month. Progress is being made on ma- terials, design, maintenance and safety. Great careers are ending in retirement and new ones are being launched. Enthusiasm for building and maintaining great roads continues … But if you are a highway journalist, the only story that counts is the work being done – or, not done – on the next long-term federal trans- portation act. Whether you hate or love govern- ment, federal money is the lifeblood of the major roads and bridges in these United States, includ- ing, but not limited to, the Interstate highways. Since I started covering road and construc- tion subjects in the 1980s, we Americans have hatched a new six-year Federal Transportation Act every six years. The centerpiece for each bill was the highway program, with federal money covering about half of the cost of build- ing and maintaining the nation's highest-volume roads and bridges. Different political dramas clouded the birth of each new bill. The most dramatic was prob- ably President Reagan vetoing the first bill set before him because it had too many pork barrel projects attached; the legislation was resubmit- ted months later with a fraction of the pork and President Reagan signed it – along with an increase in the federal fuel tax to pay for the aggressive new program. The last six-year program our federal govern- ment passed was signed into law by President George W. Bush during his first term. In 2012, Congress managed to pass a two-year bill that has been extended many times since. Through it all, the most critical challenge has been dodged – how to restore fiscal health to the Highway Trust Fund. The rational answer to that question is ridicu- lously simple: we need to raise the highway user fee, the fuel tax, for the first time in a couple of decades. But politics aren't rational, and although the vast majority of representa- tives and senators in both parties agree that we desperately need to invest in our roads and bridges, no one is willing to pursue a fuel tax increase – or any other kind of tax increase, for that matter. The political consequences are seen as too dire. So, as we go to press, the House and Sen- ate are working on separate six-year bills that would at least modestly increase highway spending each year … but they are not talking about funding. As volatile as taxes are in poli- tics, with the 2016 presidential election season well under way, it's hard to imagine a fully- funded six-year bill getting passed and signed into law before the elections. Which leaves us road journalists looking for more rocks to paint. final word | by Kirk Landers Painting rocks