Like the countdown on a ticking time bomb in the latest Hollywood blockbuster, time is running out for US transportation infrastructure funding. Yet political bickering in Washington, D.C., is preventing a new funding bill from riding to the rescue and some lawmakers are openly wondering if the hero will \u00a0save the day this time.<\/p>\n
In March, US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx presented Congress with a new $302 billion transportation bill. Called “GROW AMERICA” — which stands for\u00a0“Generating Renewal, Opportunity and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency, and \u00a0Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America” — the\u00a0<\/span>four-year bill would replace the current transportation bill, MAP-21, which expires at the end of September.<\/p>\n If lawmakers don’t pass a new bill before the current bill expires, it could put at risk the resources<\/a> of the Highway Trust Fund, which is the primary source of federal transportation funding.<\/p>\n US Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) was not optimistic of the chances of a new bill being passed anytime soon. He blamed Washington gridlock for the impending crisis.<\/p>\n “In the Senate today I am hesitant to use the words ‘produce legislation’,” Blunt told members of the American Trucking Association<\/a> recently.<\/p>\n The Obama administration’s bill calls for part of its funding to come from a one-time $150 billion transition revenue from pro-growth business tax reform, a provision that many conservative Congressmen are unwilling to embrace.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Other components of the bill — which has been dubbed by the White House as the “Vision for the 21st Century Infrastructure” Act — include:<\/p>\n The bill also includes $10 billion for a dedicated freight funding program over four years to pay for a multi-modal freight grant program for railways, highways and ports.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like the countdown on a ticking time bomb in the latest Hollywood blockbuster, time is running out for US transportation infrastructure funding. Yet political bickering in Washington, D.C., is preventing a new funding bill from riding to the rescue and some lawmakers are openly wondering if the hero will \u00a0save the day this time. In … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,293],"tags":[1079],"class_list":["post-6401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-material-handling","category-news","tag-material-handling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12627,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6401\/revisions\/12627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n