The eighth extension to the SAFETY-LU highway bill appears to be on-track but there is a somewhat welcome voice of sanity that is temporarily holding up the extension. On September 13, the House unanimously approved extending surface transportation programs until March 31, 2012 authorizing $23 billion to be spent from the Highway Trust Fund. The Senate has also agreed to the six-month extension and the price tag but has not passed the bill at this point.

The fly in the ointment is that Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is blocking attempts to pass the bill and wants an amendment to block the mandate that states use 10% of Highway Trust Fund dollars to fund so called “transportation enhancements”. Coburn noted some of the enhancement projects that had been funded with hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal fuel tax money. Among those cited were a museum in Pennsylvania, a Chinatown gateway in California and a squirrel sanctuary in Tennessee. He said states could choose to fund such projects but shouldn't be forced to do so in order to receive their federal road funding. Read more. John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said earlier this week that the senator "believes we need to prioritize bridge repair over bike paths and will use procedural tools at his disposal to strip the enhancement requirements from the bill."

With only two weeks remaining before the current extension of the highway bill expires, this is probably not the best time for one senator to draw a line in the sand, but his point is valid. We must restore trust in the Highway Trust Fund, and that means spending our federal fuel tax dollars on highway and bridge repairs and maintenance, and nothing else. For an excellent article on this subject, I refer you to The Reason Foundation.