Highway Trust Fund is Running Out

The federal Highway Trust Fund is close to running out of money. This means that there would be no money to build and maintain highways throughout the country. If the trust does run out, 700,000 jobs will be lost. All current infrastructure projects will also be left unfinished. This issue has caused a lot of conflict in Congress lately. They agree that the trust needs to be restored but they have been disagreeing about how to do so. There are multiple routes they could take to restore the Highway Trust Fund. The first would be to raise the gas tax. In the past, the Highway Trust Fund was paid for by a gas tax. The gas tax has been decreasing every year since 1993 and is 63% lower than it was. This would be the easiest, long term method of securing the trust. There will always be people buying gas, meaning money would always be coming in for the Highway Trust Fund. While this is a direct solution, Republicans refuse to raise the gas tax. The House Republicans, however, want to go with another method called "pension smoothing". It changes the rules for corporate pension funding. It has companies set aside money now to pay for benefits later. This will cause them to report higher taxable profits, which will make them pay more taxes over the 10-year budget window. Those taxes will go to the federal Highway Trust Fund. This method is much more complicated than raising the gas. Senate has decided to push off the issue for a few more days, though the trust is said to run out this Friday (August 1st).

Is "pension smoothing" a good solution for funding our federal Highway Trust Fund?

Do you agree that there are easier methods? If so, what might be some others?

How would you feel about Senate pushing the issue off so close to the trust running out?
MSNBC article