Drain the Swamp by Ken Buck

Author:Ken Buck
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621576495
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2017-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

THE TRANSPORTATION TRAFFIC JAM

Truckers try to avoid driving through the Rocky Mountains. They often take I-80 through Wyoming and then head south on I-25 into Denver, which puts a lot of truck traffic on an interstate that has only two lanes in both directions.

Several years ago, there were two efforts to help alleviate the traffic jams on I-25. The federal government wanted to widen I-25. The local authorities decided a better alternative was widening Weld County Road 49 (WCR 49), which runs parallel to I-25. Not surprisingly, the local project has come in at a third of the cost of the federal project and is practically done and already relieving traffic. The federal project has barely started, delayed and burdened by $20 million in federal environmental impact studies (which local authorities can skip if they don’t use federal funds), Davis-Bacon wage laws, and other federal regulations.

These Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) wage laws came about during the Great Depression, more than eighty years ago. Today, about sixty federal laws require the use of DBA wages. Based on these laws, all federal contractors must pay the “going rate” for contractors doing similar work in their region. But that rate is determined, not by state and local officials, but by the Department of Labor (DOL) in Washington. The DOL also sets the minimum amount of fringe benefits that all employees working on federal construction contracts must receive. In other words, contractors can’t compete to deliver the best work at the lowest rate. Washington bureaucrats set the wage rate and benefit levels. The burden falls on contractors to figure out how to classify each worker in accordance with the bureaucratic standards or face stiff penalties. These outdated laws dramatically increase the costs associated with every federal construction project.

Washington wasn’t supposed to be in control of our highways and interstate system. When President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, it contained a provision to return control to the states. The federal gas tax that funded 90 percent of the initial build was also to revert to the states for maintenance. But like so many other sunset law provisions, it never happened. Because Washington never surrendered control—of the money and the roads—now every federal transportation project takes longer and costs more.

Even worse, Congress has used the money collected in the Highway Trust Fund on all sorts of other non-highway projects, such as light rail, buses, and streetcars. At least 25 percent of the federal fuel tax is now spent on non-highway projects.6 In 2014, $8 billion of that fuel tax was spent on mass transit projects—not highway projects—and another $820 million on transportation alternative projects such as sidewalks, bike paths, highway beautification, and recreational trails. Largely because of these new additions, the Highway Trust Fund has been running deficits in recent years. Congress has had to bail the fund out to the tune of more than $73 billion since 2008.

As an example of how the

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