Fox’s Neil Cavuto consulted economist Jerry Bowyer last week to discuss reports showing the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money in August. Bowyer’s solution? Get rid of it altogether.

Bowyer said, “I think the answer is to shut it down, frankly. Some institutions become too corrupt. Just take the money and have it automatically devolve down to the states. There should be no highway trust fund because it’s not a fund anymore.”

Cavuto put up a bit of challenge: “How do you know you won’t have 50 corrupt little political systems developing to also abscond with those funds?”

Bowyer replied, “You’ll have corruption at the state level but at least the people who are making the decisions are closer to those decisions.”

“Good point,” Cavuto said That was the end of the challenge.

Bowyer continued, “…If you got rid of the highway trust fund, you’d get rid of over half of earmarks automatically. …Let’s turn to private markets for this …so you can have contracts. The rest of the world is tapping into private capital for infrastructure rebuilding whereas we’re getting more into government.”

Cavuto nodded in agreement.

InfrastructureReportCard, a website run by The American Society of Civil Engineers, gave America’s infrastructure a grade of D+. They say $3.6 trillion in spending is needed by 2020 to fix it. This is a heck of a time to talk about doing away with the highway trust fund.