According to a June 2014 report by the United States Congressional Budget Office (CBO), most of the annual spending by the federal government on surface transportation programs is in the form of grants to state and local governments. These grants are primarily financed through the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF). After decades of stable balances to meet the federal contribution toward funding road infrastructure, the amounts credited to the HTF in recent years have fallen short of meeting annual spending needs, resulting in a growing fiscal imbalance. This has necessitated the transfer of funds from the U.S. Treasury’s general fund to the HTF in the years since 2008.
Several options have been put forward over the years to address this budgetary imbalance in the longer term.
A recent report by the Law Library of Congress, National Funding of Road Infrastructure, examines the sources of funding us