The American Society of Civil Engineers is Failing Again

With a period of falling gasoline prices, now is the time to be a strong advocate for raising the gas tax.  We are still too focused on writing report cards and generating PDHs.  Every professional society serves one basic role - protecting the economic interests of their members.  The American Society of Civil Engineers should focus on two main themes - - those activities that regulate the supply of civil engineers (i.e., their efforts on requiring a Master's for professional registration has a been a long and dismal failure - the AMA is so much smarter than ASCE) and those activities that actually increase the demand for engineering and engineering services & construction (i.e., other than advocates for report cards - what is ASCE actually advocating in terms of a fiscal solution to our infrastructure disaster).

Why is ASCE setting on their hands during a period of falling gasoline prices and our historical energy transformation?

From The Atlantic Monthly:

"In theory, advocates of an infusion of spending to fix the nation's crumbling roads and bridges have found the perfect political moment.

Fuel prices are plunging to their lowest level in years. The Highway Trust Fund is broke, and Congress faces a spring deadline to replenish it. The obvious answer—the only answer, according to many in Washington—is to raise the 18.4 cent-per-gallon gas tax, which hasn't gone up in more than 20 years. Since prices at the pump have dropped more than a dollar per gallon in some areas, drivers would barely notice the extra nickel they'd be forced initially to pay as a result of the tax hike. That wasn't true until recently: For years, the pocketbook punch of the Great Recession combined with gas prices that peaked above $4 made an increase both politically and economically untenable."