Inhofe: EPW Focused on Highway Bill Reauthorization, Not Extension
WASHINGTON — A Senate transportation panel will unveil a multiyear highway bill before there is a need to approve a short-term extension of funding authority for highway programs, which expires in late spring, the panel’s chairman told Transport Topics on Feb. 25.
“We’re sticking with May 31. I don’t like the idea of starting — once you start talking about extensions, that’s all you're going to be talking about. You’re going to have an extension. Extensions are expensive,” Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said to reporters immediately after a hearing about the need to reauthorize the 2012 law, MAP-21.
“I just want to get it unveiled. I’m going to work for our timeline of May 31. I want to get it done. I don’t want to be talking now about extensions. I like to do it without extensions,” Inhofe said.
The chairman also took aim at lawmakers who support expanding states’ responsibilities over transportation planning and funding, and reducing the federal government’s role. The concept is known as devolution.
In the last Congress, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), offered a bill that would have significantly reduced federal highway funding within five years. Congress adjourned without advancing the measure to the White House.
Inhofe expects devolution legislation will come up again. “Any one member of the House or the Senate has an opportunity to express himself or herself on these issues, and I anticipate that they will,” he said.
Members of the Senate panel who were at the hearing, such as ranking member Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), agreed there is an urgency to pass a new highway bill. Several state transportation agencies already have begun scaling back infrastructure projects amid federal funding uncertainty.
Through the federal Highway Trust Fund account, the U.S. Department of Transportation assists states with maintaining and repairing aging roads and bridges, which is important to trucks. The account is projected to run out of money by the time MAP-21 expires May 31.
On the House side, transportation leaders have not indicated when they would unveil their highway reauthorization legislation.
Meanwhile, a consensus is building among key congressional observers that congressional transportation leaders will not move an expansive reauthorization to the president’s desk prior to the May deadline.
See the March 2 issue of Transport Topics for additional coverage.
