Did Congress pull a FAST one on cruise passengers?

Add to the list of things you love about Congress the new transportation bill, which will siphon fees paid by cruise passengers for federal services to the highway and mass transit systems.

The airline and cruise industries got hosed in the new bill, which is being celebrated as the first multiyear transportation funding in a decade — as if that’s an achievement in itself.

If it is, it just demonstrates how feckless the process of budgeting has become in Congress, particularly when it comes to transportation.

The so-called FAST Act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) passed the Senate 83-16 with such strange bedfellows as Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in agreement that it was a good idea.

It will earmark $305 billion over the next five years, the vast majority ($205 billion) going to highways and with a chunk ($48 billion) going for mass transit.

Depending on your point of view, this is either badly needed infrastructure improvement, or more pork for big-city transit employees and the concrete, asphalt and civil engineering lobbies.

But the question for cruise passengers and executives is why their monies should be going to these uses.

Cruise passengers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada currently pay $1.93 upon arrival for customs inspection, with the fee set at $5.50 for arrivals from elsewhere. Customs and Border Protection can use the money, and if not the fee could be lowered.

Instead, part of it will be diverted. This follows what has become longstanding practice. As early as 1990, the government began using Aviation Trust Fund revenue to balance the budget instead of supporting the FAA and customs and border protection.

But wait, there’s more. The FAST Act includes $3 billion for crop insurance, a provision that was dropped into the bill during a House-Senate conference and never considered by either body as a whole.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) forced a vote on the inclusion of crop insurance in a transportation bill. He lost. So cruise passengers will be funding a small part of crop losses next time there’s a hailstorm somewhere in America.

There’s a simpler solution, which is to raise the federal gasoline tax, currently 18.4 cents a gallon, but no one can muster the votes for that tax increase, even with regular down to $2.03 a gallon.

The only silver lining is it may be five years before politicians have another bite at the cruise apple.