Louisville Courier Journal - Emergency Bridge Funds

Op-Ed

By Rand Paul

Our nation's bridges are aging, crumbling and even sometimes falling down. Once again, the problem isn't a lack of money; it's that too often government doesn't work.

While bridges and roads sit in disrepair, the federal government spends time and money mandating highway funds to go to "beautification projects," pork-barrel vanity projects and bureaucratic waste. More insultingly, we are sending billions in foreign welfare, and spending hundreds of billions blowing up and rebuilding infrastructure in far-off countries.

I believe we should focus on our rebuilding efforts at home, so I have made our bridge problem a priority in Washington. Soon after the Sherman Minton Bridge had been closed, I asked U.S. Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez two questions on an emergency briefing call: Is there an emergency fund for fixing bridges? And, is there a national priority list for bridges that need to be repaired or replaced?

The answer to both questions was essentially no. I discovered that while there are funds to repair the Sherman Minton Bridge, there is no mechanism to replenish the fund on a routine basis. Yet, the fund for turtle tunnels and squirrel sanctuaries is mandated by law. This is Washington insanity at its most self-evident.

In fact, the fund that will repair the bridge is actually a fund designated for bridges that have already fallen down. There was initially some question as to whether the funds would be available to a bridge that had not yet fallen down.

The federal highway administrator responded that there was no national priority list for repairing or replacing bridges because the money is simply doled out to the states and each state decides how to spend it.

The only problem is that most states, Kentucky included, have total highway funds inadequate to fund the $2 billion required for either the Louisville bridge project or the Brent Spence replacement project in Northern Kentucky.

Kentucky receives about $420 million each year from the federal gasoline tax. It would take five years of using all of Kentucky's federal allotment of highway funds to build just the Louisville bridges project.

My next question to the highway administrator was: Since the annual budget is insufficient to build the Louisville bridges or replace the Brent Spence Bridge, then surely the state of Kentucky is setting aside money each year to save for these projects? (Apparently, such rational thinking was making it impossible for me to understand the bridges project.)

In the interest of actually fixing our mind-set in Washington, I proposed a federal emergency fund for bridge repair and replacement.

Earlier this month, I watched as my colleague Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., spent the better part of the day on the Senate floor describing how 10 percent of the surface transportation funds are mandated to be spent on enhancements such as turtle tunnels, squirrel sanctuaries, movie theaters and flower beds. Listening to the debate, I was appalled at the waste but intrigued by the opportunity to assign the funds to a more immediate concern such as bridge repair, thereby spending no new federal dollars.

Who could oppose such a fantastic idea that borrows no new money and raises no new taxes? Who could argue that bridge repair certainly trumps bike paths, particularly in this time of massive annual deficits? Well, it didn't take long to find out: A senator in leadership from the opposition party proudly told me that he would never take money from bike paths to repair bridges. That sums up many of the transportation problems in Washington.

In the days that followed, I requested to speak to President Obama directly about my idea and rode with him on Air Force One to present him with this emergency bridge fund bill plan. He agreed that we should fund bridges on the urgency of the repair, not on the seniority of the senator or congressman.

I told him that, in my view, bridge repair and replacement should not be a partisan issue. He appeared to agree (but unfortunately, he used the occasion to pitch his jobs plan, which is partisan in the sense that it does not attempt to adopt any of the recommendations found in the Republican jobs plan).

Nevertheless, the President was open to my emergency bridge fund idea. I hope he and both parties in Congress will support the concept and prove to a skeptical public that we can work together to fix our nation's bridges.

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