Trust Fund to Remain Solvent until 2020
This week the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook for years 2017-2027.  Included in the report – which shows the deficit increasing and non-discretionary spending shrinking – is an analysis on transportation spending.  CBO projects that both the highway and mass transit accounts of the Highways Trust Fund will remain solvent until the end of the FAST Act in September 2020.  However, they go on to predict that the Trust Fund will be facing a gap of $144 billion to remain solvent to 2027.  This means that if the FAST Act were to be reauthorized for a full five years, the Trust Fund would be short $95 billion. A six-year reauthorization would require about $120 billion.
Absent any real, dedicated new revenues, the Highway Trust Fund will be in competition for a shrinking pot of non-discretionary funding to fill the gap between revenue going into the Trust Fund and the current spending levels. The CBO report furthers underscores why AGC and other transportation stakeholders are pushing for a fix to the Highway Trust Fund in any future infrastructure or tax proposals.
For more information, contact Sean O’Neill at [email protected] or (202) 547-8892.