August 2002 AGGMAN Management

Dollars & Sense

Industry experts discuss the future of transportation funding

By Therese Dunphy

THE PANEL
E. Dean Carlson, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has more than 40 years of experience in the field of transportation. He is the former executive director of the Federal Highway Administration, where he spent most of his career. Carlson participated in the roundtable via phone.

Jay Hansen, vice president of government affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), joined the organization in 1998 after more than 12 years as a transportation lobbyist. Hansen serves on many boards, including The Road Information Program (TRIP) board of directors, the American Highway Users Alliance board of directors, and the National Partnership for Highway Quality steering committee.

Joseph A. Manero is the founder of the political consulting and public affairs firm, The Ayes of Texas, and is the political and public affairs manager/managing director for the Planning and Design Division of the ARTBA. He also manages ARTBA’s political action committee, and is a veteran of state and local political campaigns in Texas.

Drew Meyer is vice president of marketing and transportation services for Vulcan Materials Company. He has been with the company for more than 33 years. Meyer is currently vice chairman of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA), and he serves on the ConExpo-Con/Agg Long-Range Planning Task Force.

Roger Millar is a principal with the Portland, Ore.-based engineering firm Otak, Inc. Millar is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), past chair of the Pacific Northwest Council of the ASCE, and past Oregon Section ASCE president.

Pamela Whitted is vice president of government affairs for the NSSGA, and the former executive director of the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition. She was also director of congressional liaison for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the Reagan Administration and has worked for several members of Congress.

Signed into law in the summer of 1988, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) was designed to ensure that all funds collected from the federal gas taxes would be spent on transportation improvements, as originally intended under the gas tax law.
From 1997 to 2001, production levels in the aggregates industry grew 17.7 percent. But, organizations representing those businesses affected directly by federal expenditures for transportation infrastructure agree that this money is not enough to maintain current highway systems, much less to help pay for new construction.
To better focus the reauthorization debate, AggMan hosted a roundtable at ConExpo-Con/Agg ’02 in Las Vegas. In the first part of this two-part series, we discussed adequate funding levels, alternative fuels, streamlining the construction process, and the role of mass transit.

Adequate funding
Therese Dunphy: Let’s begin with a discussion of what constitutes adequate highway funding, and what is a realistic goal for this next transportation bill?
Roger Millar: I served on the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card Advisory Counsel last year. We used the FHWA estimate that we need about $94 billion a year in transportation funding from all funding sources. In 1999…we spent about $60 billion. So we’re $30 to $40 billion short a year in terms of what’s needed. Now that’s very different from what’s realistic to expect to receive.
Joseph Manero: We had been very vocal in our position that the next highway bill, the next version of TEA-21, or whatever it’s called, should call for a $50-billion-a-year highway/bridge program.
That’s what is essential — not in our opinion, but according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), just to meet the current system needs.
Now, to go beyond that — we’re just talking about on a federal level, not the federal, state, local level — you would need about a $65-billion-a-year program to improve system performance and conditions.
So where we are today with about a $32-billion-a-year program, you’ve still got about an $18 billion gap between what you’re funding and what you need to be funding to just meet system performance as it is today, without traffic getting worse, without road conditions getting worse, so on and so forth.
It’s going to be a big hill to climb, especially if the FY 2003 budget falls short of where it is now at $31.8 billion. You’ve got a shorter way to go from $32 billion to $50 billion than you would from $23 or $27 billion to $50 billion.
So a big challenge for us right now is to preserve the program at its current level to give ourselves a good position for reauthorization.
Therese Dunphy: What is the likelihood that we’re going to go beyond infrastructure maintenance and toward improvement?
Pamela Whitted: I think that’s why we have had such a concerted effort to ensure that in FY ’03 we have a highway investment level sum that’s as high as we can get. It is imperative that we start at a higher baseline in TEA-21 reauthorization. I believe it’s realistic to expect that we are going to get to $27.7 billion, which would restore the RABA reduction, but probably not to the funding level we have this year, $31.8 billion.
Dean Carlson: With budget people, baseline is extremely important. And if we don’t get that close to what we had this year, we’re going to have a difficult time increasing our revenue. I don’t have any disagreement with what ARTBA is saying. AASHTO is working on something we call the bottom-line report, and we’re not quite ready to publish our figures, but I’m sure that it would be soon. It will say that we need more money than we have been getting, and I don’t know how much.
The one thing I would say is I don’t think it’s realistic, in all honesty, to expect any substantial new taxes from the federal level. I think that we would be lucky if we could capture some of the pots we have lost because of ethanol. There’s not very much else out there that we can get our hands on.

Alternative fuel taxes
Therese Dunphy: What are your thoughts on ethanol as another revenue option?
Jay Hansen: Well, the Senate just agreed to mandate the increased use of ethanol, tripling its usage, and in addition they are banning, in many areas of the country, the use of MTBE, which is ethanol’s main competitor.
So if we’re going to see a huge growth in the use of ethanol and given that it’s taxed at a different rate than regular fuel, that means that the Highway Trust Fund is not going to collect the same amount of revenues.
So we definitely need to try to equalize the tax, if we can, on ethanol. And it would be great if we could do it this year as the Senate is debating the energy bill, and not have this roll into the TEA-21 reauthorization bill, only because there will be so many other issues that we will need to deal with.
So it’s a very important issue for us to deal with this year.
Pamela Whitted: It only seems right that if you’re going to fuel vehicles with gasohol, a mixture of ethanol and gasoline, and these vehicles are using the roads, that the taxes collected should go into the Highway Trust Fund. The energy bill in the Senate includes a transfer of 2.5¢ of the tax on ethanol that now goes into the general treasury for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund.
Jay Hansen: And that’s about $400 million.
Pamela Whitted: Yes. There’s general support for the provision and it makes a lot of sense. The gap between the tax on conventional gasoline and the tax on ethanol, that’s another story. There are several proposals to transfer the difference into the Highway Trust Fund, but these proposals aren’t likely to progress before TEA-21 reauthorization.
Joseph Manero: The Highway Trust Fund loses…about a billion dollars a year in revenue because of the ethanol tax difference, for lack of a better term.
It’s broken down in several ways: 2.5¢, as she said, of the tax on ethanol — or ethanol-based gasohol — goes into the general fund and the remainder goes into the Highway Trust Fund, but it is taxed at a lower rate.
Yet the 2.5¢ accounts for about 400 to 500 million— a year. And overall it’s about a billion dollars a year. And it’s growing. With ethanol usage on the rise, especially in California, with the MTBE ban, it’s going to skyrocket. And there’s little reason to really subsidize it anymore when there’s a government mandate for its usage.
Roger Millar: It points out a long-term issue I don’t think anybody wants to address in TEA-21 reauthorization. The long-term issue is what are we going to do about eventually substituting a different revenue stream for the gas tax… You’ve got ethanol now, but you’re going to see fuel-cell vehicles and other things, plus the increased fuel efficiency.
People are getting more road use for less dollar… We know nobody wants to touch a replacement for the gas tax at this time, but eventually the industry is going to have to address the issue.
Joseph Manero: Well, tied right into that is recent talk of raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, CAFE.
Some members of Congress wanted to go as high as 40 miles to a gallon, which would really have devastating impacts on the Highway Trust Fund…
Everything in Washington usually works in a vacuum, where you talk about your issue, but you don’t consider the effect that it would have on everything else over here. Raising CAFE standards would have a devastating impact on the Highway Trust Fund because it would zap billions of dollars of revenue over the long haul.
While it’s great for air quality, and we’re all in favor of improved air quality, you have to consider things outside of the vacuum and how they’re going to affect transportation funding, because it would have a major impact on transportation funding.
And we’re encouraging members of Congres — as they consider energy legislation and as they consider CAFE renewal or raising CAFE — to take into account the effect on the Highway Trust Fund that it’s going to have over the long term and look at other avenues to support transportation infrastructure.
Dean Carlson: The Transportation Research Board has run a couple of studies on other ways to develop revenue for the transportation programs, and it’s a really tough hill to do, because the political will is lacking.
Drew Meyer: I have some data here from the FHWA, indexed to 1990. Compared to 1990, motor fuel consumption has gone up about 24 percent. And the miles travelled has grown to about 126 from a base of 100, which is 26 percent.
So there has been a tracking, if you will, of both motor fuel consumption and the vehicle miles traveled, despite the fact that CAFE standards have been in place; and that comes about because of the trucks, those vehicles defined as light trucks that don’t have quite the fuel efficiency of the vehicles subject to the CAFE.
But it is true that we’re starting to see a leveling off of fuel consumption, and that’s going to probably continue. To reemphasize the ethanol problem, there will be more ethanol consumed as part of the fuel consumption, which is bound to reduce the amount of gas tax revenues.
Pamela Whitted: As will an increased consumption of other alternative fuels.

Budgetary constraints
Therese Dunphy: Many states are experiencing the same budget shortfalls as the federal government. Can you speak to the impact that both federal and state budgets are having on your ability to move highway projects forward?
Dean Carlson: Well, obviously we’re doing the budget wars out here. We’re about $700 million below estimates of a year ago. And $700 million supposedly are to be made up, marginally, from about half tax cuts and — or tax increases and about half spending cuts, but the will doesn’t seem to be there to increase the taxes.
They have already taken the amount of sales tax that was supposed to come into the highway program, so we’re kind of struggling to see what’s going to happen. But it’s going to be a very serious issue.
Then if you throw on top of it the federal problem, we probably won’t be able to continue the program that the legislature put in place in 1999.
mass transit
Therese Dunphy: What role should mass transit play in upcoming highway funding legislation?
Joseph Manero: That’s up to Congress to decide… Our members build highways, they build transit, they build airports, they build port facilities.
The role of mass transit really depends on its role in particular communities and what particular role it plays in moving people around as determined by local states and governments.
We are all about increasing the level of funding available so that states and local governments have the ability to choose how to spend their money.
Therese Dunphy: One of the comments that Mary Peters made before the NSSGA board was regarding the concept of flexible funding. Can you speak to that?
Pamela Whitted: We have to ensure sufficient flexibility in the program to allow responsible allocation of resources. There is a role for all modes of transportation. Local entities must have input and authority in funding decisions that affect them.
Transit and the highway lobby have been working very closely together in trying to secure adequate funding for the highway program, because they are so closely tied in this program.
Roger Millar: We find more and more where we used to have a highway versus transit debate, the issue now is transportation — the appropriate mode of transportation for the appropriate situation.
Drew Meyer: If I’m not mistaken, TEA-21 has some capability to shift back and forth — between transit and highway.
And that obviously while they have had that flexibility to do so — when it’s a zero-sum game, there’s only a certain amount of money in total. There’s only so much shifting back and forth you can do in order to satisfy both constituencies.
Pamela Whitted: We all came together to form the Americans for Transportation Mobility (ATM), which is a coalition of transportation interests. Transit is very much a part of ATM, as are NAPA and ARTBA. We have to work together to achieve increased funding for infrastructure investment and also to promote quicker project delivery.
ATM has run a series of ads (that) demonstrate we’re working hand in hand with transit in the effort to grow transportation infrastructure investment.
Jay Hansen: …clearly NAPA supports the 80/20 funding allocation for transit.
The pressure that the Congress is under with transit is that there are many more new-start requests for transit than Congress can fund. Under transit’s funding allocation, federal versus state match, the federal government in theory can fund up to 80 percent of a transit new-start project.
The reality is Congress is funding maybe 40¢ on the dollar now. So there’s an effort on the Hill to try to pump the federal match up to a similar 80/20 requirement like we have on highway projects.
The problem you’re going to come into with something like that is, assuming current funding levels, it may have the effect of lowering the federal match for highways, because the argument is to make it equitable, it should be the same match for highways as it is for transit.
This is an issue that the Congress is going to have to deal with. Members of Congress love the new-start program, but, as you heard around the table, there are funding requirements just to maintain the current system.
You have a lot of pressure on funding additional security on our transit systems. Funding will have to be found for all of that. Again, it’s a pressure on the Highway Trust Fund. And the other problem with transit that the Congress will have to deal with is the donor/donee issue.
It’s an inequitable formula allocation right now… The way we dealt with that in TEA-21 was we found new money. And we pumped up the program, we made the pie bigger, and we were able to give everyone more money in the end, even though you were making every state’s highway program more equitable.
I don’t know how they are going to do it this time around, especially with the problem of raising a gas tax in the next Congress.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to raise the gas tax, but we’re going to have to really work hard to enact a gas tax increase.
If we are able to do that, it would solve a lot of problems that Congress is going to have to deal with on the next reauthorization bill.

August 2002 Management Dollars & Sense State by State				Dollars & Sense Industry experts discuss the future of transportation funding By Therese Dunphy THE PANEL E. Dean Carlson, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, has more than 40 years of experience in the field of transportation. He is the former executive director of the Federal Highway Administration, where he spent most of his career. Carlson participated in the roundtable via phone. Jay Hansen, vice president of government affairs for the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), joined the organization in 1998 after more than 12 years as a transportation lobbyist. Hansen serves on many boards, including The Road Information Program (TRIP) board of directors, the American Highway Users Alliance board of directors, and the National Partnership for Highway Quality steering committee. Joseph A. Manero is the founder of the political consulting and public affairs firm, The Ayes of Texas, and is the political and public affairs manager/managing director for the Planning and Design Division of the ARTBA. He also manages ARTBA’s political action committee, and is a veteran of state and local political campaigns in Texas. Drew Meyer is vice president of marketing and transportation services for Vulcan Materials Company. He has been with the company for more than 33 years. Meyer is currently vice chairman of the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (NSSGA), and he serves on the ConExpo-Con/Agg Long-Range Planning Task Force. Roger Millar is a principal with the Portland, Ore.-based engineering firm Otak, Inc. Millar is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), past chair of the Pacific Northwest Council of the ASCE, and past Oregon Section ASCE president. Pamela Whitted is vice president of government affairs for the NSSGA, and the former executive director of the Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition. She was also director of congressional liaison for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during the Reagan Administration and has worked for several members of Congress. Signed into law in the summer of 1988, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) was designed to ensure that all funds collected from the federal gas taxes would be spent on transportation improvements, as originally intended under the gas tax law. From 1997 to 2001, production levels in the aggregates industry grew 17.7 percent. But, organizations representing those businesses affected directly by federal expenditures for transportation infrastructure agree that this money is not enough to maintain current highway systems, much less to help pay for new construction. To better focus the reauthorization debate, AggMan hosted a roundtable at ConExpo-Con/Agg ’02 in Las Vegas. In the first part of this two-part series, we discussed adequate funding levels, alternative fuels, streamlining the construction process, and the role of mass transit. Adequate funding Therese Dunphy: Let’s begin with a discussion of what constitutes adequate highway funding, and what is a realistic goal for this next transportation bill? Roger Millar: I served on the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card Advisory Counsel last year. We used the FHWA estimate that we need about $94 billion a year in transportation funding from all funding sources. In 1999…we spent about $60 billion. So we’re $30 to $40 billion short a year in terms of what’s needed. Now that’s very different from what’s realistic to expect to receive. Joseph Manero: We had been very vocal in our position that the next highway bill, the next version of TEA-21, or whatever it’s called, should call for a $50-billion-a-year highway/bridge program. That’s what is essential — not in our opinion, but according to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), just to meet the current system needs. Now, to go beyond that — we’re just talking about on a federal level, not the federal, state, local level — you would need about a $65-billion-a-year program to improve system performance and conditions. So where we are today with about a $32-billion-a-year program, you’ve still got about an $18 billion gap between what you’re funding and what you need to be funding to just meet system performance as it is today, without traffic getting worse, without road conditions getting worse, so on and so forth. It’s going to be a big hill to climb, especially if the FY 2003 budget falls short of where it is now at $31.8 billion. You’ve got a shorter way to go from $32 billion to $50 billion than you would from $23 or $27 billion to $50 billion. So a big challenge for us right now is to preserve the program at its current level to give ourselves a good position for reauthorization. Therese Dunphy: What is the likelihood that we’re going to go beyond infrastructure maintenance and toward improvement? Pamela Whitted: I think that’s why we have had such a concerted effort to ensure that in FY ’03 we have a highway investment level sum that’s as high as we can get. It is imperative that we start at a higher baseline in TEA-21 reauthorization. I believe it’s realistic to expect that we are going to get to $27.7 billion, which would restore the RABA reduction, but probably not to the funding level we have this year, $31.8 billion. Dean Carlson: With budget people, baseline is extremely important. And if we don’t get that close to what we had this year, we’re going to have a difficult time increasing our revenue. I don’t have any disagreement with what ARTBA is saying. AASHTO is working on something we call the bottom-line report, and we’re not quite ready to publish our figures, but I’m sure that it would be soon. It will say that we need more money than we have been getting, and I don’t know how much. The one thing I would say is I don’t think it’s realistic, in all honesty, to expect any substantial new taxes from the federal level. I think that we would be lucky if we could capture some of the pots we have lost because of ethanol. There’s not very much else out there that we can get our hands on. Alternative fuel taxes Therese Dunphy: What are your thoughts on ethanol as another revenue option? Jay Hansen: Well, the Senate just agreed to mandate the increased use of ethanol, tripling its usage, and in addition they are banning, in many areas of the country, the use of MTBE, which is ethanol’s main competitor. So if we’re going to see a huge growth in the use of ethanol and given that it’s taxed at a different rate than regular fuel, that means that the Highway Trust Fund is not going to collect the same amount of revenues. So we definitely need to try to equalize the tax, if we can, on ethanol. And it would be great if we could do it this year as the Senate is debating the energy bill, and not have this roll into the TEA-21 reauthorization bill, only because there will be so many other issues that we will need to deal with. So it’s a very important issue for us to deal with this year. Pamela Whitted: It only seems right that if you’re going to fuel vehicles with gasohol, a mixture of ethanol and gasoline, and these vehicles are using the roads, that the taxes collected should go into the Highway Trust Fund. The energy bill in the Senate includes a transfer of 2.5¢ of the tax on ethanol that now goes into the general treasury for deficit reduction to the Highway Trust Fund. Jay Hansen: And that’s about $400 million. Pamela Whitted: Yes. There’s general support for the provision and it makes a lot of sense. The gap between the tax on conventional gasoline and the tax on ethanol, that’s another story. There are several proposals to transfer the difference into the Highway Trust Fund, but these proposals aren’t likely to progress before TEA-21 reauthorization. Joseph Manero: The Highway Trust Fund loses…about a billion dollars a year in revenue because of the ethanol tax difference, for lack of a better term. It’s broken down in several ways: 2.5¢, as she said, of the tax on ethanol — or ethanol-based gasohol — goes into the general fund and the remainder goes into the Highway Trust Fund, but it is taxed at a lower rate. Yet the 2.5¢ accounts for about 400 to 500 million— a year. And overall it’s about a billion dollars a year. And it’s growing. With ethanol usage on the rise, especially in California, with the MTBE ban, it’s going to skyrocket. And there’s little reason to really subsidize it anymore when there’s a government mandate for its usage. Roger Millar: It points out a long-term issue I don’t think anybody wants to address in TEA-21 reauthorization. The long-term issue is what are we going to do about eventually substituting a different revenue stream for the gas tax… You’ve got ethanol now, but you’re going to see fuel-cell vehicles and other things, plus the increased fuel efficiency. People are getting more road use for less dollar… We know nobody wants to touch a replacement for the gas tax at this time, but eventually the industry is going to have to address the issue. Joseph Manero: Well, tied right into that is recent talk of raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, CAFE. Some members of Congress wanted to go as high as 40 miles to a gallon, which would really have devastating impacts on the Highway Trust Fund… Everything in Washington usually works in a vacuum, where you talk about your issue, but you don’t consider the effect that it would have on everything else over here. Raising CAFE standards would have a devastating impact on the Highway Trust Fund because it would zap billions of dollars of revenue over the long haul. While it’s great for air quality, and we’re all in favor of improved air quality, you have to consider things outside of the vacuum and how they’re going to affect transportation funding, because it would have a major impact on transportation funding. And we’re encouraging members of Congres — as they consider energy legislation and as they consider CAFE renewal or raising CAFE — to take into account the effect on the Highway Trust Fund that it’s going to have over the long term and look at other avenues to support transportation infrastructure. Dean Carlson: The Transportation Research Board has run a couple of studies on other ways to develop revenue for the transportation programs, and it’s a really tough hill to do, because the political will is lacking. Drew Meyer: I have some data here from the FHWA, indexed to 1990. Compared to 1990, motor fuel consumption has gone up about 24 percent. And the miles travelled has grown to about 126 from a base of 100, which is 26 percent. So there has been a tracking, if you will, of both motor fuel consumption and the vehicle miles traveled, despite the fact that CAFE standards have been in place; and that comes about because of the trucks, those vehicles defined as light trucks that don’t have quite the fuel efficiency of the vehicles subject to the CAFE. But it is true that we’re starting to see a leveling off of fuel consumption, and that’s going to probably continue. To reemphasize the ethanol problem, there will be more ethanol consumed as part of the fuel consumption, which is bound to reduce the amount of gas tax revenues. Pamela Whitted: As will an increased consumption of other alternative fuels. Budgetary constraints Therese Dunphy: Many states are experiencing the same budget shortfalls as the federal government. Can you speak to the impact that both federal and state budgets are having on your ability to move highway projects forward? Dean Carlson: Well, obviously we’re doing the budget wars out here. We’re about $700 million below estimates of a year ago. And $700 million supposedly are to be made up, marginally, from about half tax cuts and — or tax increases and about half spending cuts, but the will doesn’t seem to be there to increase the taxes. They have already taken the amount of sales tax that was supposed to come into the highway program, so we’re kind of struggling to see what’s going to happen. But it’s going to be a very serious issue. Then if you throw on top of it the federal problem, we probably won’t be able to continue the program that the legislature put in place in 1999. mass transit Therese Dunphy: What role should mass transit play in upcoming highway funding legislation? Joseph Manero: That’s up to Congress to decide… Our members build highways, they build transit, they build airports, they build port facilities. The role of mass transit really depends on its role in particular communities and what particular role it plays in moving people around as determined by local states and governments. We are all about increasing the level of funding available so that states and local governments have the ability to choose how to spend their money. Therese Dunphy: One of the comments that Mary Peters made before the NSSGA board was regarding the concept of flexible funding. Can you speak to that? Pamela Whitted: We have to ensure sufficient flexibility in the program to allow responsible allocation of resources. There is a role for all modes of transportation. Local entities must have input and authority in funding decisions that affect them. Transit and the highway lobby have been working very closely together in trying to secure adequate funding for the highway program, because they are so closely tied in this program. Roger Millar: We find more and more where we used to have a highway versus transit debate, the issue now is transportation — the appropriate mode of transportation for the appropriate situation. Drew Meyer: If I’m not mistaken, TEA-21 has some capability to shift back and forth — between transit and highway. And that obviously while they have had that flexibility to do so — when it’s a zero-sum game, there’s only a certain amount of money in total. There’s only so much shifting back and forth you can do in order to satisfy both constituencies. Pamela Whitted: We all came together to form the Americans for Transportation Mobility (ATM), which is a coalition of transportation interests. Transit is very much a part of ATM, as are NAPA and ARTBA. We have to work together to achieve increased funding for infrastructure investment and also to promote quicker project delivery. ATM has run a series of ads (that) demonstrate we’re working hand in hand with transit in the effort to grow transportation infrastructure investment. Jay Hansen: …clearly NAPA supports the 80/20 funding allocation for transit. The pressure that the Congress is under with transit is that there are many more new-start requests for transit than Congress can fund. Under transit’s funding allocation, federal versus state match, the federal government in theory can fund up to 80 percent of a transit new-start project. The reality is Congress is funding maybe 40¢ on the dollar now. So there’s an effort on the Hill to try to pump the federal match up to a similar 80/20 requirement like we have on highway projects. The problem you’re going to come into with something like that is, assuming current funding levels, it may have the effect of lowering the federal match for highways, because the argument is to make it equitable, it should be the same match for highways as it is for transit. This is an issue that the Congress is going to have to deal with. Members of Congress love the new-start program, but, as you heard around the table, there are funding requirements just to maintain the current system. You have a lot of pressure on funding additional security on our transit systems. Funding will have to be found for all of that. Again, it’s a pressure on the Highway Trust Fund. And the other problem with transit that the Congress will have to deal with is the donor/donee issue. It’s an inequitable formula allocation right now… The way we dealt with that in TEA-21 was we found new money. And we pumped up the program, we made the pie bigger, and we were able to give everyone more money in the end, even though you were making every state’s highway program more equitable. I don’t know how they are going to do it this time around, especially with the problem of raising a gas tax in the next Congress. I’m not saying it’s impossible to raise the gas tax, but we’re going to have to really work hard to enact a gas tax increase. If we are able to do that, it would solve a lot of problems that Congress is going to have to deal with on the next reauthorization bill.