Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later, or, Why Taxes Shouldn't Be Cut (Somebody's Got To Pay the Bill)

The United States is saddled with a rapidly decaying and woefully underfunded transportation system that will undermine its status in the global economy unless Congress and the public embrace innovative reforms, a bipartisan panel of experts concludes in a report released Monday.

U.S. investment in preservation and development of transportation infrastructure lags so far behind that of China, Russia and European nations that it will lead to "a steady erosion of the social and economic foundations for American prosperity in the long run."

That is a central conclusion in a report issued on behalf of about 80 transportation experts who met for three days in September 2009 at the University of Virginia. Few of their conclusions were ground-breaking, but the weight of their credentials lends gravity to their findings.

Co-chaired by two former secretaries of transportation - Norman Y. Mineta and Samuel Skinner - the group estimated that an additional $134 billion to $262 billion must be spent per year through 2035 to rebuild and improve roads, rail systems and air transportation.

"The United States can't compete successfully in the 21st century with a 20th century transportation infrastructure," the report said.

The key to salvation is developing new long-term funding sources to replace the waning revenues from federal and state gas taxes which largely paid for the construction and expansion of the highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, the report says.