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“HIGHWAY BILL RESTORES TRUST WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Transportation was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E738 on May 1, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HIGHWAY BILL RESTORES TRUST WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
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HON. DOUG BEREUTER
of nebraska
in the house of representatives
Thursday, April 30, 1998
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, the highway bill recently passed by the House takes an important step toward addressing our nation's enormous surface transportation needs. In addition to the obvious benefits of much higher revenues for better roads and bridges, this legislation recognizes that the money in the Highway Trust Fund belongs to the American people. Finally, we are returning to the principles that were established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Highway Trust Funds. When Americans pay this tax at the gas pump, they have every right to expect that their money actually will be used for transportation and not diverted to other purposes. The balance held for the Highway Trust Fund has ballooned, and that money has been used for government programs and deficit reduction efforts which are not related to transportation. It is a violation of the trust of the American people when those highway trust funds are used for other purposes.
This Member encourages his colleagues to read the following opinion piece by David R. Kraemer, chairman of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which appeared in the Omaha World-
Herald on April 27, 1998. It highlights the importance of using the money from the Highway Trust Fund in the way it was originally intended.
Highway Bill Helps Everyone
(By David R. Kraemer)
(The writer is 1998 chairman of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the nation's largest organization of highway contractors.)
A lot of criticism has been flying around during the past few weeks about the federal highway bill, with the media, special interest groups and fiscal hawks all trying to paint the bill as a pork-laden ``budget buster.''
The finger-pointing obscures what the highway bill is really for: improving our transportation system. Critics of the highway bill are missing--or choosing to ignore--three critical realities.
One, America's transportation infrastructure is in desperate need of improvement. Two, the highway bill is paid for in advance through fees paid by people who use the system, and the revenues go straight into the Highway Trust Fund expressly for this purpose. Three, improving our highways will save thousands of lives. Plain and simple.
The first point is obvious to anyone who travels the nation's highways. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of miles of roads and thousands of bridges are in poor condition, posing a danger to drivers and undercutting economic growth. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 59 percent of the nation's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition, and 31 percent of our bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
The Department of Transportation also says we must spend
$46.1 billion annually just to maintain our highways and bridges, let alone make improvements or upgrades. Clearly, funding road repair and improvement should be a top priority for the federal government.
Fortunately, the dollars Congress is committing to the program are available from a reliable source--highway users.
The most misunderstanding issue related to the highway bill is where the money--all $200 billion plus--is coming from. It comes from all of us who use the roads, through taxes paid at the gas pump and through other road-related assessments. For every gallon of gas purchased, 18.3 cents is deposited into the Highway Trust Fund, which by law is supposed to be used for transportation improvements.
Unfortunately, billions of dollars have been allowed to accumulate in the trust fund and mask deficit spending elsewhere in the federal budget. More than $25 billion is sitting in the trust fund now, unspent on road and bridge repair.
If people want to criticize Congress about the highway bill, the issue is not how much they want to spend but how little. By keeping dollars in the trust fund that were intended to go toward road and bridge improvement. Congress is short-changing America's highway users.
The fact is, improving highways will save lives. Research shows that for every $1 billion spent since 1955 on improving the nation's highways, 1,400 traffic deaths and 50,000 injuries have been avoided. The Transportation Department estimates that every year 30 percent of all traffic fatalities--more than 12,000 American deaths--are related in some way to poor road conditions. Adding turning lanes, widening shoulders, constructing lane barriers, improving signage and safety markings and repairing dangerous bridges all are important safety upgrades proven to save lives.
When a bridge collapses and lives are lost, the story makes the evening news and a hue and cry is raised about how to prevent it from happening again. The answer lives in Washington and in the thousands of repair and improvement projects authorized in the federal highway bill that are now being so roundly criticized. Unfortunately, all the political squabbling diverts attention from these real issues.
So who benefits from the highway bill? Everyone. Communities grow, commercial and private transportation becomes easier and more efficient, and thousands of new jobs are created. Moreover, improving our transportation system will save billions of dollars from being lost each year in wasted productivity, vehicle maintenance, insurance fees and, tragically, health care expenses to care for people injured on our highways.
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