The spin around the release of the president's fiscal year 2017 budget proposals is that it is a "vision statement" of a progressive president no longer bound by any pretense of legislative viability.

Cheap gasoline raises the perennial question over how the U.S. funds its transportation infrastructure -- a key rationale behind Obama's proposed oil tax. And it makes electric vehicles (EVs) and biofuels less competitive on price, hindering U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and oil consumption. Can the U.S. continue to fund upkeep of its infrastructure and reduce emissions from transportation?

State governments need to find other sources of funding to keep their highway programs whole. And many are finding tolling to be that solution. Tolling brings us closer once again to the "user pays" principle that helped create America's modern highways.

Are we one step closer to a Congress that sees the need to boost spending in order to boost jobs and economic output for years to come, as we asked in our last column? It could mean the U.S. Congress has finally seen the folly of austerity policies that shrink growth, as has happened in Europe. Or, it could be because of a so-called "emergency."

The result of such austerity policies has been lost output and overall wealth that several economists say could last for years--and may even be permanent--hurting both jobs and economic output.

There are 61,000 structurally deficient bridges in the U.S. today and 28 percent of urban roads are in substandard condition. Quite simply, the nation's transportation infrastructure is in crisis. Congress has the ability to change it. But it must put forward a bill that takes both funding and safety seriously.