Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 13, 1990                   TAG: 9003133414
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TRANSPORT

Last week, the Bush administration finally looked at these problems. Unsurprisingly, it found them monumental and concluded that a great deal needs to be done. Then it passed the primary responsibility for improvements, including raising the money, to the state and local governments.

Not all of this is Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner's fault. His department's plan is comprehensive: It includes 169 guidelines and 65 "program initiatives" across the vast spectrum of transportation in these United States. Reports indicate that his original policy statement also acknowledged a federal role in such matters as drawing down the transportation trust funds; enacting a new weight-distance tax for large trucks; and continuing to fund Amtrak.

But as with all such plans, it had to go through the Office of Management and Budget, and OMB's fine-toothed comb deleted or changed references to federal spending aside from what's already in the budget. The odd result is a national program that looks to everyone else for the initiative and momentum to carry it out. The prospect is that we will wind up with a centipede that knows generally where it wants to go but can't get its legs moving in unison.

In the Bush White House, it is one thing to identify problems; quite another to do anything about them. OMB's changes aim at removing suggestions of federal responsibility for improving transportation, in which Uncle Sam has played the leading role for most of this century. That is, since developments in transportation - the invention of the airplane and automobile, the crisscrossing of the country with rail lines, the mushrooming of truck traffic - made it plain that getting people and goods from one place to another was a national concern demanding a firm hand on the steering wheel.

George Bush remains determined to keep his read-my-lips pledge. The feds will sit this one out; any tax increases for salvaging a transportation system on the verge of breakdown will have to be imposed at lower levels. In 1988, state governments paid half the cost of highways and local jurisdictions 28 percent, with only 22 percent from Uncle Sam.

Since then, 18 states have increased motor-fuel taxes. Bush apparently feels they aren't doing enough. Meantime, the White House and Congress deal with such expensive inconveniences as the $166 billion savings-and-loan bailout by putting them off budget.

Bush's campaign pledge is only one symptom of an infection that began sweeping the country in 1981. Taxes have never been especially popular anywhere, but Ronald Reagan lifted tax revulsion to the status of religion. Citizens still want the same or increased levels of public services, yet Reagan - abetted now by Bush - persuaded a majority that they can have this on the cheap. Governments everywhere confront resistance when they ask people to pay for what they get.

If the White House expects that attitude to change at the grass roots, it will have to show some leadership. Admit that there's no free lunch and that citizens can't keep squandering their children's patrimony to pay today's bills. Acknowledge that no national transportation plan can work without national guidance and the momentum of fresh funds from the government that has access to the most money. Then be honest and courageous enough to ask for the needed taxes.