The landmark Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021, provided huge increases in federal funding for transportation infrastructure over the past four years. As we approach the last year of IIJA funding, coalitions have formed to support enacting similar spending in the forthcoming 2026 surface transportation reauthorization bill and the next Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act in 2028-29.
The first of these groups was the Modern Skies Coalition, unveiled in May 2025. Its 60 members include just about every aviation trade association, 14 aviation unions, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The group has argued for over $30 billion of new federal general fund spending, primarily to modernize the country’s aging air traffic control system, which really does need large-scale capital investment in both facilities and technologies. This coalition has already gotten Congress to provide $12.5 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration modernization, and it continues to argue for another $20 billion, calling the first sum merely a “down payment.”
In December 2025, a similar Move America Coalition was formed for surface transportation, with 23 members to date, including highway and transit organizations, related trade associations, four unions, two government bodies, and (again) the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Its number one objective is to push for 2026 surface transportation reauthorization funding at or above the levels set by the IIJA.
In my view, both of these campaigns are misguided. To be sure, more capital investment in aviation and surface transportation infrastructure is needed, as this country continues to grow and replace aging infrastructure. But this is an unwise way to address these needs, for two reasons.
The first is that these groups are seeking money from the federal government’s general fund, which the government would have to borrow. This departs dramatically from the long-standing users-pay/users-benefit principle under which U.S. airports, air traffic control, and highways have long been funded. Dedicated revenue streams are far more secure and reliable than general fund support, which must compete with everything else the federal government does. It’s also safer because during economic downturns, general fund spending may be cut back, but dedicated user-fee funding is more likely to remain stable.
Dedicated users-pay funding also distinguishes air and much surface transportation from other infrastructure that can legitimately be termed subsidized. Advocates of larger funding for heavily subsidized Amtrak, for example, would love to be able to claim that competing highways and air travel are ‘also subsidized,’ but they aren’t, as long as they are funded by user fees.
The second and much more serious reason to oppose a repeat of IIJA-scale spending is the federal government’s looming insolvency. Social Security’s own actuaries point out that the program’s trust fund will be empty by 2033. The Medicare trust fund is expected to run out around the same time.
For the federal government to borrow hundreds of billions more for programs like the bipartisan infrastructure law would make the nation’s debt crisis even more intractable.
Today, the national debt is approximately equal to this country’s annual gross domestic product, which it has never been except during wars. The Congressional Budget Office business-as-usual projections show increasing annual budget deficits as far as the eye can see, and the national debt growing far beyond 100% of GDP.
Social Security’s insolvency is less than a decade away. Creating new spending commitments like a repeat IIJA is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. The members of the above spending coalitions should not ignore the fiscal realities of the next decade.
Congress should focus on preparing America’s vital transportation infrastructure for greater self-sufficiency, rather than further increasing annual budget deficits and ballooning the national debt.
What would this mean, in practice, for both the 2026 surface transportation reauthorization and the 2028-29 FAA reauthorization?
For surface transportation, federal funding needs to start on a downward path so that state departments of transportation are not suddenly cut off in 2033 or 2034. Initial steps for Congress could include eliminating discretionary grants, banning earmarks, and considering increasing federal gasoline and diesel user taxes to offset inflation, since those taxes were last increased in 1993 To promote state transportation departments’ greater self-sufficiency, Congress should also eliminate the $30 billion cap on private activity bonds to make it easier for states to finance megaprojects via long-term public-private partnerships.
Congress should also expand the tiny federal Interstate highway tolling law, the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program (ISRRPP), to apply to all states and all Interstate highways within each state, so that other states can follow Indiana’s lead in rebuilding their aging Interstates via toll revenue financing.
The U.S. Department of Transportation could also fund research on how states could convert state highway systems to self-funded highway utilities, with the ability to charge user fees sufficient to cover current and future capital and operating and maintenance expenditures, and with the user fees paid directly to the highway utility entity (which could be state-owned or investor-owned).
The state transportation departments’ roles would evolve to focus on safety, policy, and regulation, not construction or operation. The aim would be to have these policy changes underway by the time the federal government is dealing with the Social Security and Medicare bankruptcies.
For aviation, Congress should replace the passenger ticket tax paid to the federal government with global standard weight-distance user fees paid by airlines and business jets everywhere else in the world. Those user fees should be paid directly to the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO), which should be separated from the FAA, which is the air safety regulator and should be at arm’s length from the operator of the air traffic system, per long-standing International Civil Aviation Organization policy, which Congress has ignored.
Commercial airports that now rely on federal Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants should be allowed to increase their passenger facility charges (PFCs) to offset the loss of those grants. Congress could also encourage greater use of long-term public-private partnership leases by allowing existing airport revenue bonds to remain in place when an airport transitions to a long-term P3 lease.
These are not small changes, but they are needed to safeguard vital highway and aviation infrastructure from the coming federal insolvency. Since we know the United States has severe financial challenges coming in the decades ahead, now is the time to start protecting air and surface transportation infrastructure from these problems.
Congress needs to start implementing these transportation policy changes in the upcoming surface and aviation reauthorization bills, rather than waiting until federal insolvency and fiscal chaos have fully arrived.
A version of this column first appeared in Public Works Financing.