GOP Offers Five-Year Highway Bill Funded by Oil Drilling in U.S.

Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives said they would introduce a five-year highway funding bill that would be paid for by expanded domestic oil drilling.

The measure would allow new oil production along the nation’s coastlines and in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and boost production in the nation’s oil shale areas.

The most recent transportation spending authority law expired in 2009 and has not been replaced because Congress cannot agree on how to fund it. Funding has been provided through a series of temporary extensions.

“The revenue will come from expanding American energy production, not from higher taxes or from deficit spending,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a Nov. 17 press conference, when he and Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) outlined the plan.

“It will also include reforms that increase private-sector involvement in infrastructure . . . and there will be no earmarks,” Boehner said. The bill will be written within weeks, the two House leaders said.

They provided no details on funding but said the reauthorization measure would maintain current transportation spending levels, nearly $50 billion annually.

Dubbed the American Energy Infrastructure Jobs Act, the reauthorization plan would spur job creation, Mica and Boehner said.

The Republican effort to link reauthorization and jobs to increased oil drilling drew immediate fire from Democrats.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the transportation committee, said bills to open coastal and Alaska drilling areas have been around for years and gone nowhere.

“It is Speaker Boehner’s birthday today, but it sounds like Big Oil is going to get all of the gifts,” Rahall said. “While Big Oil is hearing, ‘Drill for Highways, Baby, Drill,’ from the Republicans . . . states and unemployed construction workers will literally be hearing, ‘Wait, Baby, Wait.’ ”

“Nothing in today’s announcement identifies real, sustainable revenues needed to address our long-term surface transportation infrastructure investment needs,” Rahall said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said, “As I have stated many times, we need to pay for the surface transportation bill in a way that is not contentious and does not threaten jobs.”

The Mica-Boehner plan would “mire a very popular surface transportation bill in controversy, and . . . directly threaten many thousands of fishing, tourism and recreation-related jobs,” Boxer said.

Boxer and three other senators introduced a $109 billion two-year bipartisan reauthorization bill Nov. 4 but have not proposed a way to pay for it as Highway Trust Fund revenue from fuel taxes continues to decline.

American Trucking Associations welcomed the Mica-Boehner announcement as progress on reauthorization and was “anxious to learn more about the proposal,” ATA spokesman Sean McNally said.

Joshua Schank, president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, said he was disappointed to watch Boehner make a “nakedly political move.”

“The contrast between what the Senate did and what [Boehner] did was dramatic, because the Senate came out and said, ‘Here’s a bipartisan piece of legislation that we’re going to do our best to pay for and is doable.’ There were compromises in it; it was reasonable,” Schank said.

Mica and Boehner revealed few details about their plan, but in a written statement, Boehner said three bills already introduced in the House will be an integral part of the measure — a bill to lift President Obama’s drilling ban on new offshore areas, a measure that would promote oil shale production and a bill to open parts of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuges to drilling.

Critics of the plan, including Boxer, said it would take years to get drilling leases in place, which would not produce enough revenue to support a reauthorization bill.

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who spoke at the press conference and on Nov. 14 introduced the offshore drilling bill that links oil revenue to transportation spending, may have given a clue to the funding mechanism.

Stivers told Business First, a publication in Columbus, Ohio, that, to generate immediate income for infrastructure, the government could sell $40 billion to $100 billion in bonds against future oil lease revenue.

In terms of policy and programs, the House bill is expected to mirror the six-year reauthorization plan that Mica outlined this summer but never introduced (7-11, p. 1).

At that time, the House leadership said it planned to cut current transportation spending by at least 30%, a position that later changed as President Obama pushed his jobs initiative.

Mica’s position has changed slightly, too, given that, until the announcement with Boehner, he insisted on a six-year reauthorization. In a Nov. 14 letter to Boxer, Mica said the Senate bill would “bankrupt” the trust fund.

The Boxer bill is the first reauthorization measure to be introduced in years.