Dear Senators,

On behalf of more than 1.9 million Americans for Prosperity activists, I strongly urge you to oppose the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) Act, S. 1813. The bill reauthorizes for two years the massively inflated transportation funding levels that we saw in the last highway bill (SAFETEA-LU) – a continued spending binge that the country can ill afford.

I urge you to vote NO on S. 1813 when it comes to a vote this week. Americans for Prosperity will rate this vote in our congressional ratings.

In 2005, Congress passed and President Bush signed SAFETEA-LU into law, providing for a whopping 31-percent increase in funding for surface transportation programs. Yet only about two-thirds of that funding was set aside for road construction, maintenance and highway safety programs – the rest was squandered on luxuries (nature trails, bicycle paths, and historic preservation projects) or urban transit (trolleys, buses, etc. that serve only 1.8 percent of surface travel passengers nationwide). The unsurprising result of this spending spree was that Congress had to bail out the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to the tune of $35 billion since 2008.

This year, Congress has an opportunity to enact fundamental reform, but this bill falls short. The bloated spending levels have been inflated even higher in this bill, and gas tax revenues will continue to be diverted to extraneous non-road projects. Even worse, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has proposed plugging the HTF’s fiscal gap with accounting gimmicks (i.e. by raiding other trust funds and already-established sources of revenue), and even that doesn’t cover all of the spending.

MAP-21 does take some steps in the right direction. There are no earmarks to waste taxpayer dollars. Programs are consolidated and the project delivery process is streamlined. Still, much more needs to be done. Spending levels must be cut to match HTF revenues so that further General Fund transfers are not needed. Federal transit and enhancements projects need to be cut entirely; let the states and localities that benefit directly from these projects take responsibility for them. Costly federal mandates like Davis-Bacon prevailing wage and project labor agreement requirements must be removed. More power needs to be devolved to the states to give them flexibility to fund their own highway projects as they see fit – an idea that Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and others have advocated.

I urge you to vote NO on S. 1813 when it comes to a vote this week. Americans for Prosperity will include this vote in our congressional ratings.

Sincerely,

James Valvo
Director of Government Affairs
Americans for Prosperity

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