House Republicans introduced a new proposal this week on funding a six year surface transportation reauthorization bill. The bill allocates about $230 billion in funding for transportation projects over six years ($38 billion per year).

Democrats are quick to point out this is a reduction in current spending and Larry Ehl has a great table on his blog showing how much each state would allegedly lose (about $1.4 billion for Washington State).

In 2010, the feds spent about $50 billion from the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), while the new House Republican proposal only spends an average of $38 billion per year.

The problem however, is current spending levels are completely unsustainable. In 2010, the HTF only brought in about $35 billion in revenue, which was $15 billion less than what Congress spent. Worse, in a report released in June 2010, the GAO found that "nearly all states received more funding than they contributed in highway taxes since 2005."

In the last few years, Congress has supplemented the overspending with about $35 billion in transfers from the General Fund. This is worrisome because the HTF (and highway funding in general) was always intended to be paid for by users of the system, either through gas taxes or transportation-related fees.

Also, WA has historically been a donee state when it comes to HTF contributions. I've covered the donor/donee game with the HTF before. Since 1956, Washington State has paid about $13 billion into the highway account while receiving about $17.5 billion back over the same time period. This means for every $1 in federal highway taxes and fees Washington State taxpayers sent to the feds, we got back $1.34 on average. In 2009 alone, we got back a whopping $1.52.

House Republicans are simply trying to save a sinking ship by tying spending levels to actual revenue, which has been the general tone of voters recently. And because WA State has been a big winner in the HTF game, we absolutely cannot complain when appropriations go down.