Finally, gasoline and other automotive levies apply with equal rates to everyone. So when any of those taxes are increased, the low income and fixed income groups are hit the hardest. The flow of money into their families is cut down and there is no way to compensate for its loss. Their standard of living must, of necessity, be revised downward.

While a lot of people talk about curbing inflation, tax proposals such as the one being discussed here today keep carving into the incomes of millions of people who are already laboring beneath the burden of spiraling prices.

If I may, I'd like to cite myself as a prime example. I am now 82 years old and have been living on a limited retirement income for some years. That income is fixed and static. Yet in the last 10 years alone, prices on general consumer items which I need and use have risen more than 24 percent. My income dollar has therefore dwindled to 76 cents since 1949.

More appropriate to the topic at issue, gasoline taxes themselves have risen some 37 percent in the same period. Gasoline prices I don't believe have risen anywhere near that amount. So it is clear that such tax inflation is another of the important factors that has reduced my real income and the limited incomes of others like me.

It should be borne in mind that even with all the prosperity enjoyed by this country at the moment, per capita income in the United States is still in the vicinity of $2,000 per year. In addition, more and more people are reaching retirement age and living in a situation similar to mine.

This Federal gasoline tax proposal, if enacted, will just take one more bite out of the foundations on which we have built our lives. It cannot do anything but abet other inflationary tendencies and could even act as a lever for gasoline tax increases at the State level.

Unless such unjustified and thoughtless tax increases are curbed, I could well find myself with less practical mobility than my parents had when I was born in 1877.

I appreciate the opportunity to express my views of the United Commercial Travelers on this important issue.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Cox, for coming to the committee and expressing the views that you have.

Our next witness is Mr. Koch.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT M. KOCH, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL CRUSHED LIMESTONE INSTITUTE, INC.

The CHAIRMAN. Would you identify yourself by giving your name, address, and the capacity in which you appear?

Mr. KOCH. I am Robert Koch, executive vice president of the National Crushed Limestone Institute.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Harrison, our colleague on the committee from Virginia, asked me to express his regrets at not being able to be here during your appearance this afternoon. He is greatly interested, he said, in what your organization has to say about this matter before the committee.

He asked me to draw your attention to the testimony of certain witnesses yesterday who said that greater savings could be made in using asphalt concrete as opposed to slab concrete.

Would you like to submit a comment on that point?

Mr. KOCH. We would be glad to.

The CHAIRMAN. In accordance with Mr. Harrison's request, you may include that.

(Information referred to follows:)

Hon. WILBUR D. MILLS,

NATIONAL CRUSHED LIMESTONE INSTITUTE, INC.,

Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee,
House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., July 28, 1959.

DEAR CHAIRMAN MILLS: In reply to the request from Congressman Harrison, which you presented to me in his absence, I am submitting the following supplemental statement to what I was privileged to present to you and your committee personally last Friday.

First, I wish to make it very clear that members of the limestone industry furnish aggregates for all types of highway construction. In some instances larger tonnages are developed for our industry under flexible or asphaltic pavement construction and in others under rigid or cement pavement construction. However, in view of the Bureau of Public Roads letter of June 20, 1959, to the Asphalt Institute, copy attached, indicating that the Bureau has published no conclusions or findings on the maintenance costs per mile of different road types and in view of the savings in original construction costs as shown by the attached table, we believe competitive bidding should be thoroughly considered if not required.

As we approach the problem of how to finance our expanded highway program it seems to me that we must at all times be in a position of defending our expenditures by being able to prove that we are buying the maximum construction possible per tax dollar expended.

Respectfully yours,

California:

State

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE,

BUREAU OF PUBLIC ROADS, Washington, D.C., June 20, 1959.

Mr. ARVIN S. WELLBORN,

Chief Engineer, The Asphalt Institute,
University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

DEAR MR. WELLBORN: In reply to your inquiry of June 19, 1959, concerning published data on maintenance costs per mile, you are advised that the Bureau has never published and distributed any conclusions or findings of fact on the maintenance costs per mile of different road types. Numerous attempts have been made in the past to develop data on this important subject but no accurate or reliable results have so far been obtained. The material that was developed

in such previous efforts by the Bureau was, in our judgment, so nonuniform in its preparation as not to warrant public distribution. Such data included numerous prorated expenditures, widely varying levels of maintenance adequacy, and numerous internal policy decisions peculiar to individual State's operations, which have perhaps had more bearing on the apparent costs than have the physical differences in construction types.

There is a need for reliable data on this subject and some plans are underway now with the Highway Research Board looking toward initiation of a research type of study which it is hoped will yield the kind of reliable and unassailable data that is needed, in combination with other facts, to assist highway administrators in reaching decisions on this matter.

Sincerely yours,

F. C. TURNER,

Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer. Mr. KOCH. Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, I very much appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today in support of adequate financing for our expanded highway program. As you and the members of this committee know, in addition to the official capacity in which I am now appearing, I also represent the limestone industry as president of the National Agricultural Limestone Institute. In the 2 organizations there are 503 producers of limestone, all but 15 of whom produce aggregates for highways.

Earlier this year I was privileged to testify before the House Public Works Committee in support of Congressman Fallon's bill, H.R. 5950. In my testimony before that committee I brought out that the limestone industry is now past the planning stage and would suffer drastically should the expanded highway program be curtailed in any way. Members of this industry have borrowed and invested money in new plant capacity and are geared to supply all the limestone aggregate this mammoth program will require.

If Congress does not offer a solution to the problem, our industry will not only suffer a great financial loss but the economy as a whole will be severely damaged from the laying off of thousands of key employees and truckers.

Furthermore, any break in the orderly procedure currently underway will inevitably increase the ultimate cost of the highway program. While we in the National Crushed Limestone Institute will support any method of financing this essential program, we are concerned over the delay in reaching a compromise between the several different proposed methods. While our original concern was with the allocating of 1961 fiscal funds, we now find areas where payments for 1960 contracts this fall may be held up and other contracts canceled or deferred.

Inasmuch as our highways are a capital investment which will greatly expand our economy, are we not being too budget conscious to even think about curtailing them? We should not tailor the highway program to the available money but should provide sufficient funds to keep the 41,000-mile program on schedule.

The immediate problem facing current contracts would not exist if the highway trust fund had not been burdened with a liability of $1,975 million for work previously authorized on general fund revenues. Receipts have totaled $5.81 billion since the trust fund was established. However, instead of being reserved to be used for future highway work, costs of highway construction authorized in earlier years, when all of the highway-user taxes went into the general fund, were shifted from the general fund to the trust fund.

Thus, the trust fund, with a specific group of revenues to accomplish a specific purpose, began its existence not with a zero balance as might be expected, but instead with a liability of $1,975 million.

Had this general fund liability not been shifted to the trust fund, its actual June 30, 1959, balance of $523 million would have been $2.489 billion and there would have been no question of a trust fund deficit this year or next year or the year after.

What actually happened, of course, was that the trust fund not only accepted a pre-1956 liability of $1.975 billion, but actually had to run a deficit of $501 million right at the inception before the new program got underway. This is shown on a bar graph.

(The bar graph referred to follows:)

We requested Dr. Robinson Newcomb, who has been asked to testify before the Council of Economic Advisers, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Banking and Currency Committee, to review this problem of highway financing for us. He has developed some facts and figures which, in our opinion, everyone concerned about this problem will find of interest.

Incidentally, Dr. Newcomb spoke at our last annual convention here in Washington on "The Highway Program Is Big-But It Is Not Big Enough." I have attached a copy of this speech to my remarks as he points up quite vividly some problems of the immediate future.

(The speech referred to follows:)

[From the Congressional Record, proceedings and debates of the 86th Cong., 1st sess.]

THE NATION'S HIGHWAY PROGRAM

Extension of remarks of Hon. John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky in the Senate of the United States, Tuesday, March 10, 1959

Mr. COOPER. Mr. President, last month the National Crushed Limestone Institute, Inc., held its annual convention at the Statler-Hilton Hotel, here in Washington, on January 21 and 22. The luncheon address delivered at the convention on Thursday, January 22, concerns the question of the scope and adequacy of the Nation's highway programs. It was delivered by Dr. Robinson Newcomb, who has served as an economic consultant for several congressional committees, and as an economist in governmental agencies.

I ask unanimous consent that the address be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

"HIGHWAY PROGRAM IS BIG, BUT IT'S NOT BIG ENOUGH

"(Address by Dr. Robinson Newcomb presented at the annual convention luncheon of the National Crushed Limestone Institute, Inc., January 22, 1959, Hotel Statler-Hilton, Washington, D.C.)

"Mr. Chairman, ladies, and gentlemen, the one thing about which I am fairly certain is that our highway program has to be bigger. Each of you has a simple one-line chart No. 1 in front of you.