exclusive domain. Gov. John S. Fine of Pennsylvania was blistering in his response the day following Nixon's speech. "We want the federal government to get out of the gasoline and fuel oil tax field for once and for all and now is the time to do it before we embark on any large-scale highway program such as the President has suggested…We want to continue unimpeded by any federal system."

This opposition to any federal role in roadbuilding was not new. At the governors conference in 1952, conference chairman Gov. Val Peterson of Nebraska, expressed the consensus view by asking the rhetorical question, "How many governors would oppose a resolution telling the federal government to get the hell out of the road-building business?"

The president's next move was to appoint an advisory committee to work with the governors and relevant cabinet agencies, to craft a comprehensive plan. To head it, Eisenhower tapped his trusted advisor, retired Gen. Lucius D. Clay. The committee's report, A Ten-Year National Highway Program, was delivered to Eisenhower in December 1954.

ENR's Dec. 30, 1954, issue devoted 35 pages of coverage to the report, with graphs that showed the rate of total investment in highways falling far behind the actual traffic growth rate beginning in 1945, and remaining significantly behind the projected traffic growth rate twenty years into the future. The committee's plan called for spending an additional $50 billion over ten years, twice the existing rate of spending on roads. $26 billion of the additional spending would be required to bring the 40,000 mile interstate network up to standard, and that $26 billion would be the federal share of the cost. The states, collectively, would have to furnish the remaining $24 billion, while continuing their fiscal policies to keep their regular road construction and maintenance programs going at their existing rates.

Eisenhower's advisers disagreed strongly over the funding mechanisms underpinning the plan. When finally transmitted to Congress in February, the report called for a Federal Highway Corporation to be created to issue bonds to pay the federal share of the system. Gas tax revenues would be used to repay the bonds and to continue other components of the federal-aid highway program.

The midterm elections had ushered Democratic majorities into both the House and Senate. Sen. Harry Byrd (D-Va), chair of the finance committee, was a staunch opponent of public debt. Under his leadership the Clay plan was defeated. The action then moved to the House. Rep. George Fallon's (D-Md) subcommittee on roads drafted a bill that called for financing the interstates through increases on gasoline, cars, trucks and tires. While all of these industries stood to benefit from the system, they could not agree on what proportion of the costs each would bear. After strong lobbying, including 100,000 telegrams from truckers to members of Congress expressing opposition, Fallon's bill went down by a vote of 292 to 123.

The final push

The bill's prospects in 1956 were uncertain. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in September 1955, which raised doubts about his ability to win reelection, or possibly run at all. And would a Democrat-controlled Congress give a Republican president a victory on one of his primary domestic initiatives during a presidential election year?

During the winter of 1955-56, two new forces entered the arena. The roadbuilding community, which had been passive during the previous legislative session, ignited. Speakers at the American Road Builders Association convention in January presented a compromise plan by the trucking association on tire taxes, and ways to free up more time so that state highway engineers could take on a huge leap in expected work.

The previous fall the Bureau of Public Roads had released its designations for the final 2,200 miles of urban interstate routes in 40 states. Copies of "The Yellow Book" (formally titled, "General Location of National System of Interstate Highways") were sent to each member of Congress. When Congressmen from urban areas saw the tangible benefits they could expect, they became enthusiastic supporters.

The revised bill established a Highway Trust Fund, a pay-as-you-go plan which would accumulate revenue from a three-cent gas tax, as well as excise taxes on trucks and busses and an annual registration fee for trucks graduated by weight. Ways and Means Committee chair Hale Boggs (D-La) introduced the bill, saying, "[For] the first time, the American motorist will pay these taxes with the assurance that he will be the direct beneficiary of every penny which he pays and he will pay with the knowledge that every cent derived from these taxes will be devoted exclusively to his personal convenience and safety." The House vote was 399 to 19 in favor.

The Senate had to make some changes to satisfy Sen. Byrd's concerns about the fund's imbalances in later years. After two months of intense wrangling the reconciled bill, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, was approved 89-1 by the Senate, and by voice vote in the House. President Eisenhower was in the hospital, recovering from intestinal surgery, and signed it on June 29th, his last day in the hospital, without a ceremony or photographer present.