Devolve Federal Transportation Spending to the States

Transportation bill to nowhere

Worth reading: an op-ed penned by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, in the Wall Street Journal today. He explains how Senate Democrats and House Republicans have “surrendered to the status quo” of unsustainable fiscal policy by cranking up transportation spending and bailing out the Highway Trust Fund with borrowed money.

DeMint makes a modest proposition: “We should devolve the federal highway program from Washington to the states. We can dramatically cut the federal gas tax to a few pennies, which would be enough to fund the limited number of highway programs that serve a clear national purpose.”

States then could adjust their state gas taxes, avoid congressional earmarks, devise their own transportation construction plans without petitioning the federal highway bureaucracy, and sidestep the Davis-Bacon Act requirement to pay labor-union wages on federally funded projects.

Why aren’t Virginia’s congressmen making a similar case?

— JAB