Disaster Avoided for Now: Highway Trust Fund Update

Disaster Avoided for Now: 

Highway Trust Fund Update

Looks like Congress is continuing to do what it does best: maintaining the status quo with procrastination until a later day.

But in the meantime, roadway disasters were avoided until at least May of next year, when it will come up for debate in the House and Senate again. 

GeoTraffic covered this problem two weeks ago, when this latest fiscal cliff became headline news. Then, the American Federal Highway Trust Fund was scheduled to bottom out by this past Friday (August 1) unless Congress voted to extend funding. Without these funds, money allotted to states for mass transit infrastructure, highway construction, bridge repair and maintenance, and filling those rim-busting potholes would have dried up; freezing all progress on these desperately-needed projects. 

The only change made by the House, which the Senate then approved with an 81-13 vote, was that instead of having to revisit this Trust Fund debate in December, it was pushed back to May 2015. Do deadlines mean anything anymore?

In the end, the transportation systems in the states all are still funded. But, again, this is Congress putting another short-term solution in place for a long-term problem.