This Week in Passenger Transport
April 14, 2008
APTA President William W. Millar called on a Senate subcommittee at an April 3 hearing to reject a Bush Administration plan to take $3.2 billion from the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund in Fiscal Year 2009 to shore up the Highway Account.
The Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing and Urban Development of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, chaired by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), held the hearing to discuss the status of transportation trust funds and their impact on federal spending.
Congress created the Highway Trust Fund in 1956 as a dedicated source for the federal government to fund the interstate highway system. Legislation signed by President Reagan in 1982 created the Mass Transit Account within the Highway Trust Fund. The Mass Transit Account receives 2.86 cents of the current 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline, and the same amount of the 24.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on diesel.
Millar cited a report by the Congressional Budget Office projecting that, without intervention by Congress, the Highway Account will no longer be solvent by Sept. 30, 2009, the end of FY 2009, and that the Mass Transit Account should have a balance of $4.2 billion at the same time but will become insolvent by FY 2012. Sept. 30, 2009, is also when the current federal transit authorization legislation, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act-A Legacy for Users, will expire.
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