Who Tore Up the Tracks? · Episode 17 of 24 · 25 min
Ninety Cents on the Dollar: Building the Trust Fund
A Virginia senator who hated debt insisted the interstates be paid from what drivers put in at the pump. Harry Byrd thought he was imposing discipline, but he built a self-refilling fund that paid ninety cents of every dollar and had no transit counterpart for twenty-seven years. The episode takes the machine apart and shows why it now depends on general-fund transfers.
Who's who
- Harry F. Byrd+2 more episodesSenate Finance chairman who insisted on pay-as-you-go highway financing
- Dwight D. Eisenhower+12 more episodesPresident who signed the 1956 act
- Lyndon B. Johnson+7 more episodesSigned the first federal transit program in 1964
- Ronald Reagan+11 more episodesSigned the 1983 act giving transit a share of the gas tax
- Hale Boggs+1 more episodeLouisiana representative who proposed linking user taxes to highway spending
- George M. HumphreyTreasury Secretary who suggested modeling the fund on Social Security
Where it happens
- Washington, D.C.+31 more episodesCongress, Treasury and the federal road agencies
Timeline
- 1955Congress kills the bond-financed highway plan over money
- July 1956Highway Trust Fund begins; gas tax rises from two to three cents
- July 1964Urban Mass Transportation Act: $375 million over three years from the general fund
- 1973Governors may withdraw unbuilt interstate segments for a transit substitute
- 1983Congress raises the gas tax and creates a Mass Transit Account
- 2008The fund stops covering its own outlays; general-fund transfers begin
Still debated
The lockbox is often overstated: the 1956 restriction was statutory, not constitutional, and the fund's revenue was scheduled to expire in 1972. Whether the gas tax has been unchanged since 1993 depends on a brief dip before 1997. The ninety-ten ratio was a standard, not universal, rate.
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