The Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2003

Mr. President, I am reluctant to enact a short-term extension of the highway funding bill without improving equity for donor states. At issue is the historic mistreatment of about 20 states, including Michigan, known as "donor" states, who, year after year, have sent more gas tax dollars to the Highway Trust Fund in Washington than were returned in transportation infrastructure spending. The remaining 30 states, known as "donee" states, have received more transportation funding than they paid into the Highway Trust Fund.

This came about in 1956 when Senators from a number of small and large states banded together to develop a formula to distribute federal highway dollars that advantaged their states at the expense of the remaining states. They formed a coalition of about 30 states that would benefit from the formula and, once that formula was in place, have tenaciously defended it.

At the beginning there was some legitimacy to the large low-population predominately Western states getting more funds than they contributed to the system in order to build a national interstate highway system. Some arguments remain for providing additional funds to those states to maintain the national system and our bill will do that. However, there is no justification for any state getting more than its fair share.

Each time the highway bill is reauthorized the donor states that have traditionally subsidized other states' road and bridge projects have fought to correct this inequity in highway funding. It has been a long struggle to change these outdated formulas.

Through these battles, some progress has been made, but we still have a long way to go to achieve fairness for Michigan and other states on the return on our Highway Trust Fund contributions. At stake are tens of millions of dollars a year in additional funding to pay for badly needed transportation improvements in our states and the jobs that go with it. Unfortunately, this short term extension bill does not make any improvements on the rate of return for donor states, even on the new funds that are included in this bill that are above last years funding levels.

My colleagues have argued that this short term bill is a straight "clean" extension of federal highway and transit programs. They have argued that we cannot accommodate any policy changes in an extension bill such as improving the rate of return for donor states. But this bill does include one policy change. It includes an increase in funding over last year. In fairness to donor states and to bring us closer to narrowing the funding gap between donor and donee states, the additional money contained in this bill should have been distributed to donor states at a higher rate.

Unfortunately, this bill does not do this. It contains more money than last year yet fails to address the longstanding inequity. Every time we extend these programs without addressing equity donor states lose out on getting back their fair share of gas tax dollars currently being spent in other states. There's no logical reason for some states to continue to send that money to other states to subsidize their road and bridge projects and to perpetuate this imbalance is simply unfair.

I plan to enter into a colloquy with the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to obtain a commitment to achieve a 95 percent rate of return for a donor state's share of its contributions to the Highway Trust Fund in the long term transportation reauthorization bill, up from 90.5 percent under the current bill.

This is an issue of simple fairness and we should not be satisfied until we achieve it.