In an article about federal highway legislation yesterday, the Washington Post illustrated the art of advocacy journalism cloaked as news reporting. The article explored different options for raising federal taxes $100 billion to fund state highways. It quotes three transportation lobbyists and included scare lines about the supposed consequences of not raising taxes (“… hundreds of thousands of construction jobs put at risk…”).
The article does not mention that spending cuts are an option for the upcoming highway bill. Everyone agrees that there is a large gap in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), but gaps can be closed either by tax hikes or spending cuts. Yet the “transportation advocates” the Post talked to agreed, “until there is consensus on finding more money, transportation may be doomed to limp along in perpetual crisis.”
Nonsense. As I testified here, federal spending cuts would balance the HTF and solve the crisis, while spurring greater efficiency and innovation in U.S. transportation as the states played a larger role. The Post did not bother to explore that option, despite support from conservatives in Congress, prominent think tanks, and independent transportation experts.
In the election, Congress swung decidedly in a small-government direction, but the Post’s reporting did not reflect that reality, and instead presented only the lobbyist point of view. The Post’s silence on the spending-cut option is all the more striking because the newspaper admits that it would be very difficult to raise transportation taxes due to political and public opposition.
It will be interesting to see how Congress closes the HTF gap before the May expiration of the current highway bill. I hope that we have a robust debate on all the options and that the Washington Post changes course and presents its readers with a more balanced perspective.