john robert smith, why is it?they're talking about pension smoothing, which is basically playing games with pension plans in order to avoid and incur certain taxes. >> and ray, i appreciate that congress is finally wrestling with this issue, which we've known was looming since mack 21. we knew it was going to happen. this will get us through a patch between a three- to nine-month process. but you're right, it's taking ten years of revenue to support three months of expense. you can't do that very long. why are we in this position? one, transportation was never a partisan issue in the past. you covered the projects needed in mississippi, maine and other states and you got the necessary senators and congressmen to take action. we don't have that any more. it's gotten much more harder to put deals together. now you're asking for a deal that will necessitate an increase in revenue because we can't simply have the gas tax as it is present. we need much more revenue. that's back to raising the gas tax, indexing it, and

. >> john robert smith is a former mayor of meridian, miss smirks he's now chairman of transport for america, non-profit groups advocating for better transportation. and john, if you forking with us, sir, and i want to ask you first about the criticism that we just heard from grover norquist in the story and it's not universal that the trust fund, a should be funded and b, the taxes on gas should be increased to fund it. and what's your response to that? >> that's a very shortsighted response and a lack of vision in an integrative transportation system for this country. the trust fund funds not only bridges and cities, but transit and do we all want to live in towns? bus systems, do we want to live in a city that we have no public transit to get us to jobs? i don't think that's the answer. if you defund transit, you're pushing more people onto the highways and roads. it would be a disservice to stop funding the transit, which hens to support our people as they move across the transportation infrastructure. >> as i mentioned there, we increased the gas tax until 1993. what is the logic