Title: Highway Trust Fund Basics: A Primer on Federal Surface Transportation Spending | The Heritage Foundation
Headings: Highway Trust Fund Basics: A Primer on Federal Surface Transportation Spending
Highway Trust Fund Basics: A Primer on Federal Surface Transportation Spending
Highway Trust Fund Overview
Condition of the Nation’s Roads and Bridges
State Action on Transportation Funding
Proposed Approaches to Address the Highway Trust Fund Budget
Conclusion
Authors

Content: Highway Trust Fund spending has outpaced revenue by billions and will continue to do so if current policies are kept in place. Spending has expanded beyond the original purpose of building and maintaining the interstate highway system to funding a litany of non-highway projects that are not national priorities. Growth in spending has far outpaced fuel tax revenues, which have flattened (declined in real terms) primarily because technological advances, such as more fuel-efficient combustion engines and hybrid and electric vehicles, have decreased aggregate fuel consumption. Furthermore, Highway Trust Fund spending falls outside normal budgeting constraints that govern most federal expenditures. This has created the current unsustainable situation in which the Highway Trust Fund has required repeated bailouts from the general fund. Diversions from Highway Spending. Congress and the states divert roughly 25 percent of the Highway Trust Fund spending to non-highway projects that are not federal priorities. [ 12] The largest of these diversions is the Mass Transit Account, which spent some $8 billion in 2014 on buses, rail, streetcars, and other projects that should fall under the responsibility of municipal or state governments. Other programs include the Transportation Alternatives Program, which spent $820 million in 2014 on undertakings such as sidewalks, bike paths, scenic overlooks, vegetation management, and recreational trails. [ 13] These diversions sap funds that could be spent on the highway system—the purpose of the highway trust fund—and shortchange the motorists and shippers that pay directly into the system through fuel taxes.