Moving On from Federally Funded Transportation

[Geee]

National Review:

This Congress has been criticized for not passing many laws — and also praised for that in some quarters. And it’s true that in quantitative terms its productivity has been low.

 

A major case in point is transportation. Neither the Democratic-majority Senate nor the Republican-controlled House has passed a reauthorization of what was once known as the highway bill, which used to be done every five or six years.

 

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This failure can be ascribed in part to partisan warfare and to intra-party differences. But it’s also due to the obsolescence of the federal funding scheme used since the Interstate Highway System was first authorized in 1956.

 

That was a successful piece of bipartisan legislation. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, with memories of leading a convoy across America’s primitive roads in 1919, believed the nation needed a system of superhighways to transport troops and matériel in case of foreign attack.