Federal highway bills served America well for many years. But it's time to move on.

Use private capital for roads and bridges,

 not taxpayer money

by Michael Barone

This Congress has been criticized for not passing many laws — and praised for that in some quarters. And it's true that in quantitative terms, its productivity has been low.

A major case in point is transportation. Neither the Democratic-majority Senate nor the Republican-controlled House has passed a reauthorization of what was once known as the highway bill, which used to be done every five or six years.

This failure can be ascribed in part to partisan warfare and to intra-party differences. But it's also due to the obsolescence of the federal funding scheme used since the Interstate Highway Systemwas first authorized in 1956.

That was a successful piece of bipartisan legislation. President Eisenhower, with memories ofleading a convoy across America's primitive roads in 1919, believed the nation needed a system of superhighways to transport troops and materiel in case of foreign attack.

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