Posted on 05/13/2005 9:07:30 PM PDT by neverdem
Don't be discouraged by this week's report that traffic congestion is worse than ever across America. Relief is on the way from Congress, thanks to one of the designated 3,800 "high-priority projects" in the new highway bill. It's a new transit system guaranteed to free you from bumper-to-bumper traffic, as long as you have a horse.
This addition to the nation's transportation infrastructure is the brainchild of Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat from the southwestern Virginia mountains that Daniel Boone traversed on the way to Kentucky. Mr. Boucher secured $750,000 of highway money for the "construction of horse trails and assorted facilities" in Jefferson National Forest.
When I expressed doubts to Mr. Boucher that these new horse trails would ease traffic on the roads, he replied, "That's fair to say." He didn't expect any commuters to use them. But he insisted this really wasn't an unusual use of money from the highway trust fund, and he had a point.
The trust fund was set up with the simple idea of making drivers pay for their roads by taxing the gasoline they bought. It worked at first, giving drivers wide-open Interstate highways, but eventually new drivers clogged the lanes, and the trust fund didn't yield enough money to build new roads or even maintain the existing ones.
The highway money dwindled partly because Congress didn't raise gas taxes to compensate for inflation and the higher fuel efficiency of cars, and partly because the trust fund kept getting raided. Gas taxes have been diverted to museums, a symphony hall, a riverside promenade, downtown landscaping projects, snowmobile trails and suburban transit systems that haven't been much more effective than horse trails in reducing road congestion.
As urban traffic got worse and roads deteriorated, highway planners kept hoping that drivers' anger would force Congress to raise gas taxes and reduce pork, but the planners eventually accepted political reality. They gave up on the trust fund to build new roads and turned to another source of money: tolls collected directly from drivers.
You might keep this history in mind during the debate about another trust fund's problem, the $11 trillion long-term deficit facing Social Security. Democrats are counting on the program's popularity to force Congress to raise taxes to preserve it, but if politicians were too afraid of voters' wrath to add a few pennies to the gasoline tax, should you count on them to vote for far more painful increases?
If they don't, the only way to preserve the promised benefits is to cut federal spending, a notion that seems quaintly utopian when you look at how hard Congress has fought the White House's attempts - futile, so far - to keep the highway bill within the budget. The highway cuts demanded by the administration are chump change compared with what will be needed to pay for the baby boomers' retirement.
Around 2020, Congress must borrow money or find budget savings equal to the cost of the entire highway bill (about $50 billion per year in today's dollars) to cover the cash shortfall of Social Security. And then the budget cuts get worse each year as the annual shortfall quintuples over the following decade.
Maybe before then Congress will somehow turn frugal or work up the nerve for big tax increases or, miraculously, set aside the surplus that baby boomers are currently paying into the trust fund. But right now Congress spends the cash as fast as it gets it (and tosses i.o.u.'s to the Social Security Administration). The Social Security trust fund is essentially a slush fund, as an economist, Lawrence Hunter, told the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday.
He and other experts urged the committee to stop raiding the fund and find a way - personal accounts or some other scheme - to save the money, but the Democrats on the committee were in no mood for such drastic measures. "No matter what any of you say," Representative Charles Rangel told the economists, most people "believe that their benefits are guaranteed, and their kids believe it, and their grandkids believe that they are entitled to this benefit."
The part about the grandkids isn't quite right, at least according to polls showing young people's skepticism about getting their promised checks. Nearly half of them have already started their own retirement accounts. They, like the drivers now paying tolls for roads that aren't being built with their gas taxes, seem to understand a lesson about trust funds managed by Congress: be prepared to pay your own way.
E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com
Pure pork.
If it isn't for maintaining or expanding the currrent Interstate or US Highway system, it shouldn't be spent.
Let Virginia pay for their own damn horse trails!
Two questions:
1) Why do horses even need a trail? I thought the idea of horseback riding was to go somewhere there is no trail.
2) If it is conclusively proven that horses actually do need a trail, why does it have to cost $750,000?
Oh, unless it's old Uncle Ned who's getting that $750,000. Oh - I get it -- nevermind.
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