This week, Congressman John K. Delaney urged the Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee to meaningfully increase federal investment in roads, bridges and transit.
Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) is pushing for a “meaningful increase” in federal highway spending as the House gets ready to mark up a long-term transportation funding bill next week.
GOP leaders in the House scheduled a highway bill markup hearing on Oct. 22, just days before the scheduled expiration of the nation’s infrastructure spending.
Delaney said Thursday that the measure should drastically increase the amount of money the federal government spends on transportation projects.
“As you work to bring a draft of a Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for a mark-up, I encourage you to start from the premise that continuing baseline funding levels will only lead to a further deterioration of our already failing infrastructure,” he wrote in a letter to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.).
“Public investment in infrastructure, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, has fallen 54% since 1960. Instead of continuing our glide path to a third-world infrastructure, our next highway bill should reverse course and start our infrastructure comeback,” Delaney continued. “A meaningful increase in our infrastructure investment will create millions of jobs and help our businesses stay competitive in the global economy.”
Congress is facing an Oct. 29 deadline for renewing a temporary transportation funding bill that was approved by lawmakers in July.
Delaney has introduced a bill, known as the Infrastructure 2.0 Act, that calls for using revenue from corporate tax reform to pay for several years’ worth of roads and transit projects.
Delaney’s bill would pump $170 billion into the Department of Transportation’s Highway Trust Fund, which is normally filled with gas tax revenue, over the next six years. The money would be used to close a shortfall in federal transportation funding that is estimated to be about $16 billion per year.
The measure would also set aside $50 billion to fund the creation of a national infrastructure bank that Delaney’s office said would attract $750 billion in private investment in U.S. transportation projects.