Congress’ decision to extend the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act though July 31 may have temporarily solved federal transportation funding woes, but the House of Representatives and the Senate continue to delay a long-term decision on how to fix the growing transportation funding deficit, officials said.

“We desperately need a long-term solution for America’s infrastructure,” said U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, who voted for the two-month extension. “Congress will need to identify three or four sources of highway funding in the future for the long term, but no one has reached a consensus on what that should be.”

Brady said revenue to the Highway Trust Fund—which funds transportation projects nationwide through gas taxes and user fees—totals about $30 billion a year, but the federal government spends about $15 billion more than that to meet infrastructure needs across the country.

Brady anticipates the House and Senate will likely extend the HTF before the end of July through the end of the year as Republicans and Democrats in both chambers work out a long-term solution to the deficit.

Federal funding contributes about one-third of the budget for the Texas Department of Transportation, according to TxDOT officials. TxDOT’s federal funding authority has totaled about $3 billion a year since 2010 while more than $2 billion in federal funds were spent on TxDOT projects in Houston from 2010-14.

“We desperately need a long-term solution for America’s infrastructure." - U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands

Andrea French, executive director for the Transportation Advocacy Group in Houston, said federal funding uncertainty makes planning transportation projects a challenge for transportation entities in the Greater Houston area. French said local governments are having to become more creative to find money for transportation projects.

“That is truly the crux of the frustration,” French said. “Not only do you [not] know how much money you’re going to have for projects, you don’t know how you’re going to leverage federal funds. You don’t know how much you’re going to need locally.”

French said she thinks it is unlikely Congress will pass another long-term transportation bill soon because of a lack of motivation on the part of legislators to raise the gas tax and a self-imposed moratorium on earmarks within legislation.

“Once you took away earmarks where legislators could get their own projects taken care of in the districts, you took away the bargaining chip,” she said.

Brady believes raising the gasoline tax is not the best long-term solution as the formula for the tax pulls from some states, including Texas, to pay for infrastructure in other states. He said some of the solutions Congress is considering to fix the deficit include a transfer from the general fund, other user fees or possibly taxing profits brought overseas from U.S. companies.

Each of these funding solutions has drawbacks, he said. Brady said the federal government could fix the HTF by streamlining red tape that causes delays, giving more control to states and local communities and ending diversions within the HTF to projects other than highways and roads.