Strange Bedfellows Coalition Urges Congress To Drop Drilling for Roads

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and Natural Resources Defense Council sent a joint letter to members of Congress urging them reject the unprecedented linking of onshore and offshore oil and gas revenue with the Highway Trust Fund. In their letter, the groups note that creating this new revenue stream would undermine the longstanding user-pays/user-benefits highway funding principle that has guided infrastructure investment for nearly six decades. Further increasing the reliance of the Highway Trust Fund on revenue streams not connected to use, they argue, would threaten the future health of America’s highways.  My colleague Marc Scribner has made the case against the “drilling for roads” proposal in a previous post.