ATA’s Graves: “A few brave souls” in Congress wanted to step up on infrastructure spending

ATLANTA— There is a short window for Congress to sufficiently increase investment in U.S. infrastructure investment before early 2016 presidential campaigns squash any hope of raising taxes to pay for the estimated additional $100 billion needed over the next five years.
 
That’s the word from Bill Graves, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations. He spoke at the 28th annual meeting of the North American Transportation Employee Relations Association (NATERA).
  
ATA has been feverishly lobbying Congress for a boost in the federal fuels tax to pay for a comprehensive, multi-year infrastructure spending bill to attack long-deferred maintenance and bottleneck issues that are threatening to disruption the nation’s supply chain.
 
The current stop-gap funding for the Highway Trust Fund expires next May. Graves has been outspoken in backing an increase in the federal tax on motor fuels (18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline, 24.4 cents on diesel, unchanged since 1993).
  
“We have made almost a nuisance of ourselves on Capitol Hill so much, we have been asked to quit coming around (talking about raising the fuel tax),” Graves said. “Now that the elections are over, it’s possible a few of them will change their minds.”
  
A lifelong moderate Republican, Graves admitted it’s going to be a hard sell in the new 114th Congress that convenes in January. There will be at least 54 Republican Senators and 249 Republicans in the House (the largest number since 1931 when Herbert Hoover was president).
 
Even though Republicans will soon be totally in charge of Congress that does not make the trucking lobby’s job any easier in Washington, he said.
 
“Right now is a very challenging time,” Graves said, noting that the soon-to-be Republican-led Congress will be reluctant to raise any type of taxes before the 2016 president election.
  
Sufficiently maintaining U.S. highways and bridges is a “very, very expensive proposition,” Graves said. The estimate to maintain current funding levels of U.S. infrastructure is $100 billion above the current spending level of $254 billion level in the old two-year highway bill.
 
“Congress needs to find $100 billion,” Graves disclosed. “The floor to keep us where we are is $100 billion. Congress hasn’t shown any interest in finding that $100 billion.”
  
What is needed, Graves said, is a few courageous Republicans to break ranks from their party’s no-tax mantra to support Democrats in a compromise to fund a multi-year highway bill.
 
It will not be an easy task, Graves added.
  
“We need a few brave souls in Congress to step up,” Grave said. “But if they tell us that user fees are off the table and we have to go to general funding, we’ll shift and go from there.”
  
Trucking is one of the few industries that is actively working to raise its taxes. Some of ATA’s largest members, including FedEx and others, are working behind the scenes on a fuel tax increase to pay for U.S. road and bridge improvements. To date, Congress has been unwilling to take the truckers up on their offer.
 
“Why they would walk away from users willing to pay more in fuel taxes, I just don’t understand,” Graves said.
 
When Graves was a two-term governor of Kansas from 1995-2003, he twice raises that state’s fuel tax. He told the NATERA gathering on Nov. 10 now that fuel prices have fallen precipitously, the fuel tax increase would hardly be noticeable.
 
“Fuel prices are always volatile,” Graves said, noting we are currently enjoying the lowest prices at the pump in four years. “If you raised it 10 cents a gallon, people would hardly notice.”
 
While admitting the cost of fuel is volatile and that world oil supply is “a complicated subject,” Graves said Americans would understand a fuel tax increase if it was dedicated to repairing and improving the U.S. infrastructure.
 
“When I was in office (in Kansas), I raised fuel taxes twice,” Graves said. “People get it that stuff isn’t free.”
  
Graves said he was scheduled to meet with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, shortly after the election to get a better read on his take on fuel taxes.
 
“We think a long term (funding) solution to the Highway Trust Fund makes sense,” Graves said. “As an industry that breathes on highways and bridges, we’ll wait and see how it goes. The challenge to plus-up investment on infrastructure is a tough one.”
 
The alternative to raising fuel taxes is to somehow pay for infrastructure improvements from savings from yet-to-be passed tax reform.
 
“That is certainly not an option we agree with,” Graves said. “One we get into the general (Treasury) fund, we have to stand in line with everybody else.”
  
Graves called infrastructure investment the biggest issue facing trucking in Washington in the new Congress, and it will be decided sooner not later. “If it doesn’t happen soon, we start getting into presidential politics and posturing on whether to raise taxes or not.”