Washington, D.C. — This afternoon, President Barack Obama will deliver a speech at a crumbling bridge outside of New York City and call on Congress to pass a transportation and infrastructure bill.
Kevin DeGood, Director of Infrastructure Policy at the Center for American Progress, will be available for comment. Kevin’s work focuses on how highway and transit policies affect America’s global competitiveness, access to opportunity for diverse communities, and environmental sustainability. Prior to joining American Progress, Kevin was the deputy policy director at Transportation for America, where he conducted research, provided legislative analysis, and advanced T4 campaign priorities with congressional leaders. He is the author of Thinking Outside the Farebox: Creative Approaches to Financing Transit Projects.
To arrange time to speak with Kevin, contact Katie Peters at [email protected] or 202.741.6285.
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Just as this year’s summer construction season is expected to heat up, state governments are at risk of losing millions of dollars in federal funds that support infrastructure projects, resulting in significant construction-sector job losses across the nation. The report makes the case for why Congress must act to address the looming insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund and includes a state-by-state breakdown of the estimated funding cuts and potential job losses that each state will face next year if the funding shortfall is not resolved.
DeGood and Stein point out that one idea that is unfortunately gaining momentum is a corporate tax holiday on foreign earnings. Putting aside that a large share of “foreign” earnings already sit in U.S. banks and are the result of domestic transactions, a repatriation holiday is not a viable fix for our transportation needs. In fact, a tax holiday is the most costly and least fiscally responsible way to patch the trust fund. Offsets are intended to reduce the deficit, but a tax holiday would actually cost the government billions of dollars over the next 10 years.
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