The highway trust fund has been running on empty for nearly a year now. All that keeps the program chugging along are subsidies from general revenues.

It wasnt always thus. In fiscal 2000, the trust fund - a repository of federal per-gallon fuel taxes paid by drivers - boasted a $23 billion surplus. But in 2005, the highway reauthorization bill OK'd program spending in excess of fuel tax collections. The rest, as they say, is deficit history.

Once a moneymaker for the feds, the highway trust fund is now part of the problem of exploding government deficits. And the Congressional Budget Office projects the funds financial problems will only get worse. Under current legislation, the CBO says, programs normally funded by highway user taxes will require $67.3 billion in general revenue subsidies over a five-year period ending in fiscal 2012.

The trust fund will pile up another $56.1 billion in losses in the five years after that. And thats not counting the 75 percent spending hike proposed in the six-year, $500 billion Surface Transportation Authorization Act drafted by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar, Minnesota Democrat.........read more