Durbin speaks about national transportation funding in East St. Louis

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, said Monday he hopes to vote for a long-term transportation bill this week when the Senate votes on a highway trust fund bill.

The most recent extension of the Highway Trust Fund is set to expire at the end of this month. Durbin said a vote is scheduled Tuesday in the Senate on a highway trust fund bill.

“For the last 10 years, we’ve never had a highway bill that was longer than two years,” Durbin said during a news conference. “And now we’ve been working on 33 straight short-term extensions of the highway bill.”

The extensions have been short-term and included promises of putting together longer-term bills later on.

“States across the nation are deciding they can’t trust Congress to appropriate the money to build the highways,” Durbin said.

Continuing to pass short-term extensions is wrong, he said.

“We cannot patch our way to prosperity in the United States of America,” Durbin said.

A six-year $278 billion plan earlier this month was approved out of the Senate Public Works committee.

According to Durbin’s office, the design, construction and maintenance of transportation infrastructure supports about 138,700 full-time jobs in Illinois; those employees earn an annual payroll of $5.7 billion.

“Washington leadership is needed to coordinate out transportation systems across the United States of America,” Durbin said. “These systems are critically important, not just for the economy and the growth in jobs, but frankly the importance (that) we leave a legacy to our kids at least as good as what we inherited from the previous generation.”

Among those in attendance at the news conference were East St. Louis Mayor Emeka Jackson-Hicks, Mark Harms of the Leadership Council of Southwestern Illinois, and Michael Todd, mayor of Millstadt and a laborers union member.

Todd said long-term planning is very important for all municipalities so they can plan for future budgets in order to have some matching funds for projects.

“If we can’t do the projects, it doesn’t get people in the community back to work,” Todd said.

Harms said long-term sustainable transportation funding helps with planning for future large projects.

“We have needs that need to be met in this area,” Harms said. “Freight is going to be growing significantly over the next 25 years. For our region to grow, and participate in that growth, we need to be prepared to handle the freight effectively and a key component of that is our highway system.”

Paying for a long-term plan is a challenge, Durbin acknowledged.

Currently the federal government taxes 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel to help pay for highway and road improvements. Vehicles are more efficient leading to people needing fewer gallons of gas to drive the same distance, which means less money from federal gas taxes.

“The trust fund has not been keeping up with the cost of construction and inflation. Now what we’re doing is finding other sources,” Durbin said.

He cited President Barack Obama’s proposal to bring back and tax U.S. corporate profits that are stashed away in overseas bank accounts. It would increase transportation funding by 45 percent, Durbin said.

“I would vote for it tomorrow,” he said.

Durbin said he would vote to increase the gas tax, “as long as we give a break to lower income wage earners. We could do that through the earned income tax credit, … but I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

“I think most people believe if I’m paying a tax on a gallon of gas and it’s going right to highways and bridges, it’s money well spent,” Durbin added.

This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Durbin speaks about national transportation funding in East St. Louis."