US transportation secretary Anthony Foxx has called for lawmakers to pass a multi-year infrastructure funding bill, saying the cycle of temporary extensions is killing states' willingness for road and transit projects.
It has been ten years since Congress last passed a transportation funding bill of longer than two years.
"Last year we sent Congress a comprehensive multiyear proposal, the Grow America Act, which included 350 pages of precise policy prescriptions and substantial funding growth, all focused on the future," he said during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about transportation funding issues.
He said the extension passed by Congress last year ‘averted a catastrophe but fell short’ of meeting the country’s needs. "It was not the first short-term measure, or patch, that has been passed,” he claimed. “It was, by my count, the 32nd in the last six years. And as a former mayor, I can tell you these short-term measures are doing to America what the state [Department of Transportation] says they're doing in Tennessee, literally killing their will to build."
It has been ten years since Congress last passed a transportation funding bill of longer than two years.
"Last year we sent Congress a comprehensive multiyear proposal, the Grow America Act, which included 350 pages of precise policy prescriptions and substantial funding growth, all focused on the future," he said during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee about transportation funding issues.
He said the extension passed by Congress last year ‘averted a catastrophe but fell short’ of meeting the country’s needs. "It was not the first short-term measure, or patch, that has been passed,” he claimed. “It was, by my count, the 32nd in the last six years. And as a former mayor, I can tell you these short-term measures are doing to America what the state [Department of Transportation] says they're doing in Tennessee, literally killing their will to build."
