(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today released an issue brief on the Transportation Equity Act — A Legacy for Users (TEA-LU) that coincides with Congress’s passage of the bill.  TEA-LU, commonly referred to as the highway bill, totaled more than $X billion, $X more than the president’s stated limit of $284 billion.

“More than a year after the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) expired and seven extensions later, the long road-trip with TEA-LU has come to an end.  Unfortunately, members of Congress are taking taxpayers for a ride with this pork-stuffed bill.”       

Congress kicked off its legislative gridlock when TEA-21 expired Sept. 30, 2003. There were immediate signs of trouble when President Bush requested $256 billion (the amount collected by the gas tax) for the new six-year reauthorization while the House requested $375 billion and the Senate requested $318 billion.  Negotiations surrounding the transportation bill have resulted in fiscal car wrecks in Washington, D.C., as too many members of Congress are more concerned about special interests than overall transportation needs or the realities of a $427 billion deficit and $7.8 trillion debt.

An excise tax on gasoline was first enacted in 1932. In 1956, Congress created the Highway Trust Fund to fund mass transit projects. Instead of sunsetting in 1972, as originally proposed, the tax has grown from 3 cents per gallon to 18.4 cents per gallon and has morphed from a dedicated fund for highways into a grab bag of goodies for members of Congress. Drivers shelling out money at the pump are paying for museums, bike trails and horse trails all over the country.  The list of pork in the transportation act goes on and on: $3 million to renovate and expand the National Packard Museum and adjacent historic Packard facilities, $1.9 million for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and $175,000 for buses in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico (population 41,000), just to name a few.

CAGW will be releasing a report that highlights the inefficiency of our national gas tax and the TEA-LU program.  This report will give an overview of the problems that this current system has created, as well as examples of members of Congress that are dipping their hands into the transportation funding to bring money back to their districts.  The taxpayers deserve to know why horrific road conditions are causing them to pay for unnecessary vehicle repairs, while the gas taxes they pay to repair those roads are being sped away to pork projects. 
Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.