House transportation chairman blasts Bush infrastructure proposal

House transportation chairman blasts Bush infrastructure proposal U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James L. Oberstar blasted the Bush administration's surface transportation proposal released Tuesday, calling it a 'dead hand' that fails to provide adequate funding.
   The White House proposal, which calls for freeway tolls and major increases in private investment to finance national highway and public-transit improvements, comes as Congress prepares to tackle a six-year transportation spending bill that is expected to include a major overhaul of federal transportation spending policy and could eventually cost upward of $400 billion. The last six-year spending bill, which carried a $286 billion price tag, is set to expire in September 2009.
   Oberstar, D-Minn. said proposal 'lacked a cohesive vision' and instead relied on what 'this administration has offered over the past five years: toll it, privatize it, lease it, sell it or congestion price it.'
   In January, a two-year study by the bipartisan National Surface Transportation and Revenue Study Commission, found the nation's spending on transportation infrastructure is nearly 60 percent less than is required to deal with identified capacity, safety and congestion issues. The commission recommended the federal gas taxes be increased up to 40 cents per gallon over five years to pay, a view the Bush administration has decried. Several Republican's on the commission, including the White House appointed head of the Department of Transportation, dissented from the study's formal conclusions.
   The White House proposal released Tuesday calls for the federal gas tax to remain steady at 18.4 cents per gallon of regular gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel, where both have been for more than a decade.
   Oberstar said the outgoing administration's proposal 'calls to mind the concept of Mortmain, the dead hand, reaching out from the past to affect the future.'
   'It offers nothing to ensure a sustainable, long-term, intermodal, national transportation system,' Oberstar said.
   The committee's minority leader, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said the nation cannot count on gas taxes to support development. He said high fuel costs are forcing drivers to drive less and turn to more efficient gasoline and hybrid vehicles, which in turn is causing a drop in collected gas taxes.
   Mica added the trend is not expected to reverse and estimates that the federal government will collect nearly $3 billion less a year in federal gas taxes by 2010.