Congress Needs 'The Equivalent Of LeBron James' To Fix Highway Fund, Says DOT Secretary

WASHINGTON -- Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Monday that Congress needs the equivalent of basketball player LeBron James to help them pass a long-term extension of a federal fund that pays for the nation’s transportation system.

The Highway Trust Fund is set to run out at the end of this month, and Congress has yet to set a vote in either chamber on legislation that would extend the expiration and allow the Department of Transportation to distribute what little funds it has left to states.

“We have a clock that is running out. We’ve got 20 days left, and gosh, I wish we had the equivalent of LeBron James when it comes to taking a courageous stance that need to be taken to move this country’s infrastructure forward,” Foxx said at an event hosted by Bloomberg Government. “But alas, he plays basketball; he’s not in Congress.”

Lawmakers remain undecided on a mechanism to inject money in the highway fund. As the clock winds down, however, a short-term patch through the summer or the end of the year is more likely -- giving Congress time to figure out how to pass a six-year extension.

Foxx warned that continued delays will only hurt the nation’s crumbling transportation infrastructure even more.

Over the next 30 years, Foxx said, an additional 7 million people will be "competing" for road and transit space.

“Problems are going to get harder,” he said. “Congestion is going to get worse if we don’t do something dramatic and do it quickly. We already know that instead of investing more we have six states that have announced they are pulling back almost $2 billion in projects.”

The left does not want anyone to connect the dots, but the problem with the Highway Trust Fund, and with transportation funding in general, is over-centralization. Dot, period, end of story. We have these great, massive federal slush funds, which produce an endless struggle pitting states against states, cities against suburbs against rural areas, and various modes of transportation against each other. Instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting to work fixing their own infrastructure, everyone gets in line for a federal check, and wages scorched earth politics for the subsidy dollars.

You are running events together(TARP & Obama stimulus)

That's all very important, but you need to look at it as a sequence of events

First, there was the Bush stimulus in Feb 08, that you had to apply for on your income tax return.

A few months after that Pelosi would start agitating for a second stimulus, but she wanted infrastructure spending included. Both candidates Obama and Clinton signed off on that.

Bush was opposed to infrastructure spending, but before anything happened, the bubble burst and everything started deflating.

Then Bush got the TARP money approved by Congress in Dec, but had to turn it over to Obama and Obama would buy up all the toxic debt. All the leftwingers wanted Obama to hold back on spending the TARP money and force reforms on Wall Street, but he moved quickly because all the credit markets were frozen. So the leftwingers started Occupy Wall Street in protest.

Then you have the Obama stimulus for shovel ready, but it was just Pelosi's stimulus from the year before.

It was not as effective as it should have been because by that time, all the state govts were reeling from the economic collapse and they would use Obama's stimulus money in lieu of state money.

For example, Texas got significant Obama stimulus money for roads, school spending, and dredging ports, which they spent. Had they not got the Obama stimulus, the lege would have had to appropriate the money, so consequently, there was no net increase in spending.

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