An end to highway robbery?

• Author: Henderson, Rick

Lower taxes, less, pork, better roads

The federal government collects around $15 billion in gasoline-tax revenue a year, but not all of that money funds highway construction or maintenance. For instance, the big 1991 transportation bill called the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) included $30 million to build a moving sidewalk in Altoona, Pennsylvania, $30 million to maintain recreational motorcycle trails, and $17.3 million to subsidize a trolley, a visitors' center, and a museum complex in Texas.

Now Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), and Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) hope to dry up a major source of that pork-barrel spending by repealing most of the federal gasoline tax and making tax collection and road construction state responsibilities. By 1999, the plan would do away with all but two cents of the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax. The remaining two cents-a-gallon tax would fund maintenance and emergency repairs on the Interstate system, giving states the option to make up the difference.

At press time, Mack, Smith, and Kasich hadn't resolved how quickly they would phase those taxes out. Before House Speaker Newt Gingrich and then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole talked about repealing the 1993 4.3 cents-a-gallon tax increase, Mack had originally planned to leave it in place. And all the sponsors want to make sure gas taxes raise enough money to fund highway construction projects already under way. Sometime...