As the United States Congress imposes deep spending cuts on everything from national defence to child care, shipping industry executives are urging lawmakers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on a river network that accounts for a declining share of the nation's domestic freight, Reuters reports.
During a lobbying blitz in the past month, roughly 130 tugboat and barge operators fanned across Capitol Hill, meeting with lawmakers and congressional staffers.
The shipping executives argued that the United States government should spend $150m more each year to upgrade the Depression-era locks and dams that enable them to ship soybeans, coal and other commodities down the nation's major rivers. In return, the shippers said, they would pay more in fuel taxes.
For an industry that already is subsidized heavily by the US government — and whose growth in moving domestic freight is being outpaced by rail and interstate trucking — pushing such an argument at a time of budget cutbacks is navigating upstream.
But barge operators have cultivated a bipartisan group of river-state lawmakers, including Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who appear ready to fight for the industry's interests when the Senate takes up the issue next week.
The "Battle of the Barges" may not command the public's attention the way that the debates over gun control and immigration have. But the outcome could signal whether the traditional way of doing business on Capitol Hill — coalition-building, campaign donations and face-to-face lobbying — can still get results in an era when partisan conflicts have made it hard to advance legislation of nearly all types.
Barge executives leading the lobbying effort include Peter Stephaich of Campbell Transportation Co in Pennsylvania.
"It does seem to be unusual these days to have both sides come together and support something like this," Stephaich said last month, as he wrapped up a meeting with Alaska Democratic Senator Mark Begich and headed to a fundraiser for Republican Representative Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania.
Begich and Shuster have not announced their positions on the shipping industry's call for more government funding.
Opposition to the industry's push hasn't become public in the Senate, but that is likely to change soon. Taxpayer watchdogs and environmental groups see the industry's current subsidies as overly generous, and vow to fight any increase.
"The idea of expanding a subsidy to the most subsidized form of transportation this side of space travel is not going to happen," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense. "It's really beyond the pale."
Conservative groups such as the Club for Growth also are signaling they could join the shipping industry's opponents — a move that would get the attention of Republicans wary of facing a challenge from the right when they run for re-election.
The shipping industry has a long history of support in Congress, dating to the early days of the country when rivers were the most reliable form of cargo transportation.
In recent decades, freight rail and interstate trucking have eclipsed the shipping industry. In 1980, 27 per cent of domestic freight moved by water; by 2009 that figure had dropped to 11 per cent, according to the US Department of Transportation.
Waterborne transportation still plays a key role in moving grain, coal and other bulk commodities from the nation's interior states down the Mississippi River to Louisiana, where they are sent around the world.
Through a fuel tax, the industry pays about 10 per cent of the $800m or so spent each year to keep the nation's rivers open for navigation.
The government covers the rest.
By contrast, a fuel tax on car and truck drivers covers about 80 per cent of the cost of maintaining the nation's highway system. Freight rail operators cover all of their costs.
The barge fuel tax is supposed to cover half the costs of new construction, but it has not increased since 1994 and does not generate enough revenue to build new locks and dams in a timely manner.
At the current pace, some planned projects won't be completed for 77 years, according to an industry trade group.
