Kirk Landers
A t the end of September, Congress and the Obama Administration extended the pathetic SAFETEA-LU transportation program, as expected. However, there were two unexpected related developments. First, the House of Representatives rejected a proposal by the Administration and the Senate that would have extended SAFETEA-LU for 18 months. The extension was for 30 days. That means by the time you're reading this, that extension will have expired. Second, there was a public call for a substantial fuel tax increase by four of the least likely groups in America to support such thing: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Trucking Associations, the National Association of Manufacturers and the AAA Motor Club. The show of backbone in the House, and the support for a fuel tax increase by groups representing American business and highway users are a solid foundation for getting a progressive, fi scally sound transportation bill passed this year. The great impediment to a serious bill has always been the politics of taxation: no one wants to be wearing the scarlet letter T in an election. Now we see some slight chance of bipartisan support in the House for a fuel tax in-crease, and we have in the U.S. Chamber, one of the leading voices of fi scal conservatism in America, saying this is something we need. We also have a unique endorsement from the American Trucking Associations, a group that lives and dies by shaving pennies from per-mile costs. When truckers support a major increase in the fuel tax, they are making a profound statement: the costs of con-gestion and pavement failure are threatening the cost-effi cient fl ow of commerce more than an aggressive tax increase. And the endorsement of AAA Motor Club brings the voice of the general citizenry into the debate, and their message is similar to ATA's: Saving money on fuel taxes doesn't help when the cost is uncertain travel times and vehicle damage from decaying pave-ments. If you haven't brought these endorsements and their signifi cance to the attention of your Representatives and Senators, and to the Obama Administration, do it now. Do it in an old-fashioned letter on old-fashioned paper; get their names and addresses by searching or , or of course doing a simple Google search.www.house.gov But in addition to discussing the signifi cance of the Chamber, ATA, NAM and AAA supporting a fuel tax increase, add one more set of facts: The last time the United States increased the federal fuel tax was in 1993. When we raised the tax to 18.4 cents per gallon that year, there were 8,132,196 lane miles of pub-lic roads in America, and American motorists logged just less than 2.3 trillion vehicle miles traveled. As of 2007, we are up to 8,491,789 lane miles of public roads a 4.4 percent increase while our vehicle miles traveled jumped almost 33 percent to 3.05 trillion miles. Remind your elected offi cials that we were concerned with gridlock and crumbling pavements in 1993, and since then our usage of roads and bridges has increased seven times faster than capacity. That is why fi scal conservatives like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce favor a substantial fuel tax increase. That is why prolifi c users of the roads and buyers of vast quantities of fuel such as the ATA favor a substantial fuel tax increase. That is why the general motor-ing public as represented by AAA Motor Club favors a substantial fuel tax increase. And that is why the President and every member of the House and Senate should sup-port a substantial increase of the fuel tax and a rapid passing of the 2009 Federal Trans-portation Act. Editor Emeritus Common Sense, 2009 Kirk Landers 48 November 2009 Better Roads kirk.landers@att.net