Let states build their own highways; Congress can't pass a real transportation bill. And it shouldn't have to.

• Author: de Rugy, Veronique
• Position: Columns

WHEN CONGRESS left town for the August recess, it did so without coming to an agreement on a long-term transportation bill. Instead, the president signed a three-month extension that set the stage for another showdown this fall. More than 30 such temporary extensions have passed since the last multi-year transportation bill expired in 2011.

The inability of Congress to come together to pass a transportation package has frustrated the myriad special interests whose lobbyists want assurances that the dollars will keep flowing for years, and not just months, to come. And the media, which seldom miss an opportunity to push the "crumbling infrastructure" narrative, treat the matter as just another lamentable example of congressional gridlock inhibiting progress. But the real source of the dysfunction is the fact that Washington is so involved in state and local transportation funding decisions in the first place.

In July the Senate passed a six-year, $320 billion transportation bill that the House subsequently refused to take up--primarily because it would authorize spending for six years but only provide enough revenue to pay for the first three. Another $51 billion would have to be found for the final three years.

Not only that, but almost $48 billion in additional revenues would be needed to cover the first three years' worth of spending beyond what the federal gas tax and related fuel taxes are set to provide. Under the bill, that money would come from a number of provisions that have little or nothing to do with transportation. For example, an estimated $9 billion is supposed to be raised from the sale of 101 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and an estimated $17.1 billion is supposed to come from lowering the interest rate on dividends that banks purchase from the Federal Reserve.

These unrelated offsets do not belong in a transportation bill, needless to say.

Most of the financing gimmicks won't actually pay for the spending that will occur in the next three years anyway. Taxpayers for Common Sense found that more than 90 percent of the offsets don't kick in until after the initial spending splurge, and two-thirds of the cash won't be collected until after the six-year life of the bill. In its July 31 Weekly Wastebasket blog post, Taxpayers for Common Sense wrote that to raise money, the bill "would extend current budget treatment of [Transportation Security Administration] fees from 2023 to 2025, worth $3.5...