Asphalt Contractor Editor-in-Chief Brandon Noel sat down with Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, and Rebecca Higgins, Vice President of Policy at the Eno Center, to dig into their landmark March 2026 report, "The Last Exit: Fixing the Highway Trust Fund while Solvency is still Solvable." The conversation covers the realistic political pathways to restoring solvency, what the September 2026 reauthorization deadline means for project pipelines, and what contractors should actually be watching over the next 24 months.
WHAT'S COVERED
• Why Congress appears unable to act on the most obvious solution — and what that means for this reauthorization cycle
• The September 2026 deadline: why it matters more than the 2028 insolvency date
• How the Mass Transit Account going negative in 2027 gives highway contractors an early warning signal
• The IIJA advanced appropriations model — could Congress use it again, and what would that mean for contract authority?
• Why EVs are not the real problem — and what is
• Why the gas tax is so hard to replace and what happens when it eventually goes away
• What contractors with active federal procurements need to know right now about obligated funding
• How state cash management determines when a trust fund zero-balance actually hits your business
NOTABLE QUOTES
"There is sort of this recognition that probably the right idea is to just increase the gas and diesel taxes... but there would have needed to be a mass of people willing to all stand up at the same time and say, yes, we're going to do this. And there is not a willingness to all jump together."
— Rebecca Higgins, VP of Policy, Eno Center for Transportation
"The real deadline is first this September, for the authorization. Without that, the future contract authority isn't authorized."
— Rebecca Higgins, VP of Policy, Eno Center for Transportation
"The degree to which a trust fund zero-balance crisis hits contractors depends on how good the state is in its cash management."
— Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation
"No matter what eventually we wind up taxing, we will miss [the gas tax] when it's gone."
— Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation
