Historically, transportation policy battle lines have often formed along regional rather than partisan alignments. The regional character of transportation policy is evident in the debate over what constitutes equitable distribution of federal highway aid among the states. For many years, "donor states" (mostly in the South, but also including some states in the Midwest and the West) have complained that they receive significantly less federal highway aid than their highway users pay into the highway account of the highway trust fund (HTF; unless otherwise indicated all references to the HTF are to the highway account). On the other side of the debate, "donee states," those that receive more federal highway aid than they pay in federal highway taxes, have opposed any reduction in their existing shares of total federal highway aid. The donor-donee issue has often been the most difficult issue to resolve during surface transportation reauthorization. Since 1982, Congress has included provisions in every surface transportation reauthorization act to address these distributional concerns by assuring that each state receives at least a specified proportion of its trust-fund contributions in highway grants. The most recent multi-year authorization, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users (SAFETEA; P.L. 109-59 ), expired September 30, 2009. A series of extension acts has extended SAFETEA, most recently through December 31, 2011. For an overview of reauthorization issues see CRS Report R41512, Surface Transportation Program Reauthorization Issues for the 112 th Congress , coordinated by [author name scrubbed] . Federal monies for highway projects are not provided to states up front. Rather, under the Federal-Aid Highway Program (FAHP)—a catch-all term encompassing most of the road programs financed under SAFETEA—amounts are "distributed" to the states by notifying them of the availability of federal funds. Once a project is approved and the work is started, the states submit vouchers to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for reimbursement as costs are incurred. Funds are allocated in one of two ways: The vast majority of highway grants are formula (apportioned) funds. The formula programs apportion funds to the various state departments of transportation (state DOTs) based on formulas set forth in legislation. The discretionary programs are programs nominally under the control of the FHWA that were designed to provide funds to projects chosen on a competitive basis. Since FY2000 nearly all of this funding has been earmarked by Congress, except in FY2007 and FY2011. The distinction between formula and discretionary programs becomes especially significant in the process of creating equity programs, such as the current Equity Bonus Program (EB), which was designed to make sure that states receive federal highway grants equal to at least a specified share of their federal highway tax payments—a percentage referred to as the "rate of return." It is difficult to conceive of how discretionary programs could be constructed to guarantee a designated rate of return to every state and still remain discretionary. Also, the formula programs were originally created to fulfill policy needs, such as maintenance of the Interstate System or the repair and reconstruction of deficient highway bridges. Some highway needs, such as roads on federal lands, border crossing infrastructure, trade corridors, and Interstate System maintenance, have inherently federal aspects that would likely not be addressed fully if the Federal-Aid Highway Program were predicated on a rate of return to all states. Even advocates of devolving the FAHP to the states have acknowledged the existence of some federal needs. In addition, donor states themselves have in the past recognized the need for some states to get larger than normal shares of federal-aid funds. During the debate that preceded passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act of 1991 (ISTEA; P.L. 102-240 ), for example, donor states agreed that large, sparsely populated states and some small states should receive larger shares. To deal with these problems in a way that retains programmatic policy goals and at the same time achieves improvement in the uniformity of states' return on payments, Congress has decided to leave some programs outside of the equity programs, such as the Federal Lands Highways programs and the National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Program. The programs included in the current Equity Bonus Program and subject to the program's guarantees and distribution requirements are collectively referred to as the "scope" of the program. The major formula programs were always within the scope of the equity guarantee. Which other programs were included had changed under the various surface transportation authorization acts. Scope has a number of implications that are discussed in detail in Appendix B . The highway account of the HTF is supported by revenue from a combination of fuel taxes (15.44 cents per gallon for gasoline, 21.44 cents per gallon for diesel and kerosene, and a variety of special fuels taxes, at differing rates) as well as a number of truck taxes including, a heavy-tire tax, a truck and trailer sales tax, and a heavy-vehicle use tax. Revenues from the fuel taxes are also distributed to the Mass Transit Account (2.86 cents per gallon) and the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund (0.1 cents per gallon). All tire, truck and trailer, and heavy-vehicle use tax revenues go solely to the highway account. Because the federal taxes on fuel are collected at the first point of distribution (at the terminal "rack," usually at a refinery or a fuel tank farm) rather than at the retail level, most of the revenue is collected from a small number of corporations (often large oil companies or distributors that own fuel farms) located in a relatively small number of places. This means that the Treasury has no way of knowing how much fuel tax should be attributed to each state. FHWA has a process to estimate each state's share of payments to the highway account. In simplified form, the process is as follows: The Treasury Department provides FHWA with national revenue estimates for each kind of tax (gasoline, diesel, special fuels, and truck-related sales, etc.). FHWA then examines state fuel tax data to produce estimates of on-highway gallons of fuel taxed in each state (use is difficult to track as vehicles can gas up in one state and then travel in another). Each state's estimated on-highway gallons are divided by national total gallons. The resulting distribution is a representation of each state's share of national consumption, measured in gallons. The Treasury's estimates of total revenues received from highway users are then multiplied by the derived state shares of gallons to produce each state's estimated payments to the highway account of the HTF. The shares of the various truck-related taxes are extrapolated from estimates of diesel fuel use in each state. Gathering, compiling, reviewing and releasing the data usually takes more than a year from the end of each federal fiscal year. Consequently, the attribution estimates used to calculate the Equity Bonus are two years old. The concern by states that federal spending might benefit other states' road infrastructure more than their own has a long history. In 1808, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin recommended that the federal government provide $20 million over a ten-year period for a national network of canals and roads. The plan, however, was never funded. Among the factors that mitigated against the plan was the view of Southern states, which generally opposed federal grants for roads and canals, that spending would benefit other regions more than the South. The New England states, which had relatively good roads, opposed federal funding for roads because they expected the money would be spent for roads outside New England. Anticipating these regional concerns, of the $20 million recommended in the report, Gallatin proposed that only $16.6 million be designated for the network of roads and canals. The remaining $3.4 million was to provide benefits to those "eastern and perhaps southern states" which "are less immediately interested in those inland communications" provided for in the plan. Even with this incentive, the Gallatin plan failed to gain sufficient support to be passed. This could be thought of as forerunner of the modern minimum guarantees within the context of the donor-donee debate. Donor-donee arguments emerged again during debate on the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 (39 Stat. 355), which established the first federal aid for roads on a programmatic basis. An opponent of the legislation, Senator Lippitt of Rhode Island, presented a table to his Senate colleagues showing the share of highway spending each state would receive out of each $25 million of road aid provided, in comparison to that state's share of every $25 million in federal income and corporate taxes paid. His table indicated that 12 states (except for California, all located in the Northeast and upper Midwest) would receive smaller shares of road aid than they contributed in taxes. According to his table, three states, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, would together contribute more than 50% of the tax revenue but receive only between 11% and 12% of road spending. Senator Lippitt's table, however, did not forestall passage of the bill. Forty years later, the Highway Revenue Act of 1956 (70 Stat. 387) established the HTF. The impetus was the construction of the Interstate System (IS). Because the timing of construction would vary greatly from state to state, the construction of the Interstate System did not lend itself well to arguments in support of an equal rate of return on each year's highway tax payments. The act did, in creating the HTF, make it possible to attribute the flows of revenues from each state's highway users to the fund. Although the argument regarding a fair return on tax payments did not disappear entirely after the passage of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, it did not surface as a major issue until after the first publication of Table FE-221 in the 1972 edition of the FHWA's annual Highway Statistics.