After the recent collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minnesota, people are already blaming Pres. Bush, Congress, state officials, and engineers for not preventing the disaster. Congress has pledged $250 million to help rebuild the bridge as quickly as possible. This tragedy gives us an opportunity to look at the role of the interstate highway system in America.
A vast, costly system
With Pres. Eisenhower’s support, Congress authorized construction of the U.S. federal highway system in 1956. Eisenhower was alarmed in 1919 while crossing the U.S. as a soldier when bridges broke and vehicles got stuck in the mud. After seeing Germany’s autobahn during WWII, he argued that a nationwide system of interstate highways would improve military operations and commerce. Today, it includes 47,000 miles of roadway and 56,000 bridges.
This vast web of public highways is extremely expensive to keep up. The 2007 U.S. budget allocates $40 billion to the Federal Highway Administration, more than a third of the entire cost ($114 billion) to construct the system. Federal authorities report that 12% (73,533) of all U.S. bridges are “structurally deficient” and that it would cost $188 billion to repare them all.
Whose job is it?
Who should take responsibility for building and maintaining highways? Federal, state, or local governments, or a combination of the three? To answer this question properly, we must review a basic constitutional principle–federalism.
The Constitution is designed to unite the states and provide them with protection, but it leaves to them most authority to direct their own affairs. This structure is based on the idea that the more direct contact policy makers have with the people the better they can make programs and policies that help them.
Return power to the states
Before the interstate system, state and local governments built and maintained their own roads. Federal funding and construction of the interstate system may have been warranted for national defense purposes, but now that the system is built and military technology is much more advanced, the federal government should return full control of all roadways to the states. It should also stop funding their transportation projects.
Federal transportation funding today is used mostly for favors, bribes, and bargaining chips. Congressmen try to secure funds for their states so their constituents will vote for them. Both parties cut deals using transportation subsidies as lures in political compromises. The federal government ropes states into meeting their objectives by enticing them with transportation funding promises.
The federal government should reduce taxes allocated to transportation and let states tax according to their needs. Taxpayers in peaceful Maine should not have to fund the complex highway systems of Los Angeles. Minnesota, not the other states, should pay for its own bridge, unless the others want to donate voluntarily.
What do you think?
