July 15, 2015 - Congressman Tom McClintock voted no on the Highway and Transportation Funding Act.
This bill is a five month extension of highway and transit spending, paid for over the next TEN YEARS.
This is the J. Wellington Wimpy school of economics that got us in this mess (“I would gladly pay you a dollar of savings ten years from now for a dollar of spending today.)”
Highway taxes should finance highways and transit fees should fund transit – this assures these projects are paid for by users who make their choices based on accurate price signals. Instead, for decades highway taxes have been used to subsidize mass transit, causing chronic deficits in the Highway Trust Fund.
Instead of fixing this problem and adjusting highway taxes and transit fees to actually cover the cost of these projects, this bill kicks the can down the road, so to speak, with an array of irresponsible gimmicks. Among them: extending from 2024 to 2026 the treatment of TSA fees as mandatory savings. I can’t improve on Nicholas Calio, president of Airlines for America who said, “This plan proposes to use tomorrow’s dollars to pay for today’s problem and do so on the backs of airline passengers who are being asked to fund everything from the national debt to highways.”
Source: Congressman Tom McClintock
