Road hogs: will Congress cut back the transit pork? - budgeting for Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991

Reason, May, 1997 by Ed Carson

On one level, STEP-21 doesn't represent fundamental change. It simply reworks the funding formula, this time to reflect the growing power of donor states. But while it maintains the federal role in transportation, STEP-21 may help undermine support for all federal programs.

"At the very crux of our union is the concept that resources are gathered, then distributed on need," said Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) at a news conference endorsing the current system. It's an unusual historical perspective on our nation's founding principles - life, liberty, and the redistribution of wealth? - but it carries an important contemporary point. New York and other Northeastern states receive more transportation funding than they contribute, but overall they pay more federal taxes than they receive in federal benefits. If states get back roughly what they pay for transportation, Molinari warns, "New York and the other states represented here will demand the money back that we contribute for other programs."

If federal taxes were returned to states on a 1-to-1 basis, why include the middleman? Who would have thought that the common sense principle, you get what you pay for, could shake the federal government to its foundations?

Ed Carson (elcarson@aol.com) is REASON's staff reporter.