Infrastructure's Link to Trade Explored at Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee Hearing
Union officials, port officials, airport executives and the head of the American Trucking Associations on Feb. 6 asked members of Congress to raise user fees so that they can invest in -- or benefit from -- capital projects that could speed cargo, reduce congestion and make their properties more resilient in the case of natural disasters.
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Greg Regan, a top official in the AFL-CIO's Transportation Trades Department, noted at a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing that there used to be a 30-hour bottleneck in Chicago for freight trains before it was fixed, and that congestion around the Norfolk port can lead to trucks waiting 14 hours to get their loads and leave. He said his organization supports a “modest increase in the federal gas tax,” as well as a transition to a mileage-based user fee. He praised a bill that passed the House but is unlikely to become law, which would have allowed harbor maintenance fund projects to go forward outside of the appropriations process (see 1910290031).
The American Trucking Associations, represented by CEO Chris Spear, is calling for a gas tax hike of 5 cents a year in each of the next four years. He said that truck drivers sat in traffic for more than a billion hours in a year, equal to 425,000 drivers idling for a year. He said that gas taxes cost less than 1 cent to administer vs. 35 cents for tolls.
Curtis Robinhold, port of Portland executive director, from Trade Subcommittee Chairman Earl Blumenauer's home of Portland, Ore., noted that the Columbia River marine port welcomed regular container shipping after several years of not having it because it had become too shallow. Fully spending the Harbor Maintenance Tax Fund each year is important to his organization, he said.
Roxanne Brown, senior vice president at large for the United Steelworkers, suggested that uncollected trade remedy tariffs could pay for improvements. Brown told Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., that her members strongly support a hearing to “really, intimately drill down into what is not working at the CBP.” She had said CBP had “left $4.5 billion on the table” in uncollected AD/CVD.
Questions from Rep. Tom Rice, R-S.C., hinted at the difficulty of getting a federal gas tax increase through a Republican Senate. At the end of the hearing, Blumenauer told witnesses he was glad they brought up funding streams other than the gas tax and the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, particularly a levy on freight, CBP money left on the table and passenger facility charges. He said he is trying to learn why, when infrastructure spending “is the least controversial question before us, do we appear to still be stuck?”