Current Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and 11 former DOT chiefs on Monday sent a letter to Congress saying the lawmakers’ work doesn’t end with the patch to the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund that is currently under consideration.
“We are hopeful that Congress appears willing to avert the immediate crisis,” the letter reads. “But we want to be clear: This bill will not ‘fix’ America’s transportation system. For that, we need a much larger and longer-term investment. On this, all twelve of us agree.”
Also signing on are Secretaries Ray LaHood, Mary Peters, Norman Mineta, Rodney Slater, Federico Peña, Samuel Skinner, Andrew Card, James Burnley, Elizabeth Dole, William Coleman and Alan Boyd.
The letter notes the group’s experience includes a combined 35 years in the driver’s seat at the U.S. Department of Transportation in the service of seven presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, including Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
“Suffice it to say, we’ve been around the block. We probably helped pave it,” the letter goes on. “So it is with some knowledge and experience that we can write: Never in our nation’s history has America’s transportation system been on a more unsustainable course.”
The group opposes the funding “fits and starts” of the last five years, during which Congress has passed 27 short-term measures to pay for federal transportation programs rather than the traditional six-year bills.
A resulting “infrastructure deficit” is immediately costly to an American’s pocketbook and a long-term threat to the nation’s growth, the secretaries contend.
