Budget Forecasts for Transportation Trust Funds Show General Agreement
March 14, 2024 – It’s that time of year, when dueling budget baselines means two sets of estimates for the future cash flow of the transportation trust funds.
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By Jeff Davis
March 14, 2024 – It’s that time of year, when dueling budget baselines means two sets of estimates for the future cash flow of the transportation trust funds.
By Jeff Davis
December 1, 2023 – When assembling data for the donor state article elsewhere in this issue, something leaped out at me – the fact that Texas paid more gasoline tax into the federal Highway Trust Fund in 2022 than did California ($2.913 billion to $2.735 billion), despite Texas still having 9 million fewer residents (39.0 million vs 30.0 million).
By Jeff Davis
In the past 15 years, Congress has conducted 10 transfers from the general fund to the HTF, totaling nearly $272 billion, says Jeff Davis, a senior fellow for the Eno Center for Transportation. Of these transfers, the smallest was $6.2 billion in 2012, while the largest was $118 billion as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that was enacted in November 2021.
By Jeff Davis
At the hearing with House lawmakers Oct. 18, Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, suggested the panel scrutinize the account over the coming years. “From a truth-in-budgeting perspective, the choice seems clear: It’s time to either mend, or end, the Highway Trust Fund,” Davis told the transportation committee.
October 18, 2023 – The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on Highways and Transit met to discuss the solvency challenges associated with the Highway Trust Fund (HTF).
By Jeff Davis
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By Jeff Davis
Jeff Davis, a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation, told the subcommittee, “States are taking the lead and and testing new user-pay options.” They include ways to charge vehicles by miles traveled. “These are promising,” Davis said.
By Jeff Davis
Of the $1.4 trillion of tax receipts pumped into the Highway Trust Fund since its inception in 1956, about 8% — $114 billion — has been through the 12% FET on new tractors and trailers, according to testimony from Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, who also participated in the hearing.
“Based on the numbers, there will need to be an alternative or states will have to become comfortable with having to rely on general fund dollars for transportation,” said Garett Shrode, policy analyst with the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation.
Garett Shrode with the Eno Center for Transportation said that approach has its pitfalls because “80% of electric vehicle charging happens at the home and not at public chargers.”
“If you look at the numbers over the last two decades, we’ve been losing revenue to fuel-efficiency gains in internal combustion engines,” [Garett] Shrode says.”
August 18, 2023 – At a recent meeting in Indianapolis, state legislators from around the country exchanged ideas and status updates for alternative means for funding surface transportation programs.
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