National Lifelines

When President Reagan vetoed Congress’ $88-billion highway-construction bill, he complained that the five-year cost was excessive. Excessive compared to what?

Part of the answer can be found in a 1986 report to the President and Congress by the National Council on Public Works Improvement, summarizing recent national surveys of highway maintenance and construction needs. The estimates ranged from $27.2 billion a year to $62.8 billion. Yet spending under the program that Reagan vetoed would figure out to less than $18 billion annually.

The deterioration of the nation’s public works has been documented time and again in recent years under the rubric of “infrastructure.� The report to the President noted that public concern has matured from the mere recognition of aging highways and bridges, and obvious traffic congestion, to the economic effects of failing to have an adequate surface transportation system.

“Increasingly,� the report said, “it is understood that the condition, safety and responsiveness of the nation’s infrastructure are a reflection of national commitment to maintaining a healthy and competitive business climate, improving the quality of life, and providing a sound economic future for generations to come.�

Investment now will pay dividends well into the future. Failure to invest now will make it increasingly difficult for American commerce to function and compete. This is not surprising to Los Angeles motorists, who can deduce that just by looking at area freeways any day of the week. One of the projects vetoed by the President would cost $7.4 million a year to eliminate congestion caused by increased port-related activities.

Every workday morning, trucks stack up for miles on the southbound Long Beach Freeway, fighting to exit to the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex to unload exports and to pick up imports. The logjam repeats itself going north each evening. The ports are considered essential to future economic growth of the area and are undergoing impressive expansion. But more waterborne freight traffic will not help the area if ports become strangled at freeway chokepoints.

Also essential to the region is passenger and freight traffic to and from Los Angeles International Airport. The 17.3-mile-long Century Freeway linking LAX with the Harbor, Long Beach and San Gabriel River freeways will not be completed until the early 1990s at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion, or about $100 million a mile. Expensive, yes, but essential.

The bill is a “budget-buster,� the President claims. This is true only in a bookkeeping sense. The spending must be accounted for in the annual budget, but it will not take any additional tax money from the public, nor will it require cuts in other programs. Highway-construction money comes from a special trust fund financed by user fees, most of which come from taxes assessed on motor fuels. The money cannot be used for anything else. The fund currently has an unspent balance of nearly $10 billion, and is likely to remain in the black throughout the life of the congressional program that Reagan vetoed.

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) groused the other day about Kansans having to help pay for a Los Angeles subway. For that matter, why should Californians have helped finance 400 miles of Interstate 70 across Kansas or build the Kansas City airport? Kansas wheat will never ride the Los Angeles Metro, but it might need to get off the Long Beach Freeway and onto the wharves for export abroad. For the United States to be competitive, export bankers in Los Angeles have to be able to get to their offices just as Kansas farmers have to get their wheat to market, whether in Kansas or in Singapore.

The President has picked the wrong issue on which to stake his personal political prestige, turning the battle into one of regional division and partisanship. Congress should recognize the greater national interest in keeping America’s commerce moving, and should vote to override the President’s veto.