Highway Bill Vote Nears

Both houses of Congress were scheduled to vote this week on separate transportation reauthorization bills that would provide highway spending of more than $41 billion annually.

The Senate’s $109 billion bill is a two-year bipartisan proposal that last week survived a test vote of 85-11 on a measure that limits debate to 30 hours and prevents a filibuster of the bill.

After the Feb. 9 vote, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, begged colleagues not to attach “controversial or extraneous” amendments that would “slow this bill down.”

The nation’s transportation system is currently being funded by the eighth temporary extension since the previous reauthorization bill expired in 2009.

The Senate bill contains no new taxes and does not address truck weights or lengths, although it would mandate electronic onboard recorders for trucks.

Meanwhile, the $260-billion House reauthorization bill, to cover five years, has been the focus of intense partisan wrangling.

“The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act will be the first highway infrastructure bill that I’ve ever supported,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference Feb. 9.

“In the past, highways bills represented everything that was wrong with Washington: earmarks, endless layers of bureaucracy, wasted tax dollars and misplaced priorities,” he said.

Four provisions in the House legislation drew strong criticism from Democrats and transportation advocates.

The bill would cut off fuel-tax revenue for public transit, would expand oil drilling offshore and in Alaska, would require approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries and would reduce retirement benefits for federal workers to help pay for transportation.

On several issues central to trucking, however, the House and Senate bills are compatible.

“Both . . . include provisions creating a national clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results and improvements to commercial driver training and licensing rules to ensure our industry is only hiring the safest, best-trained drivers,” said American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves.

Graves urged Congress to seek common ground on what he called “long overdue” legislation to advance highway safety for all drivers and to repair crumbling roads and bridges.

Both bills also contain crashworthiness standards for large trucks and give the industry direction on the future of electronic onboard recording, Graves said.

While the Senate bill would mandate EOBRs, the House bill says that the Department of Transportation may issue an EOBR rule only after it solves an array of technological problems, such as how law enforcement officers would access information recorded by the devices.

DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is currently working on an EOBR rule (see story, p. 3).

The House bill also would direct DOT to conduct a field study on the controversial 34-hour restart provisions contained in the hours-of-service rule issued in December. The Senate bill does not address HOS.

Carriers have complained that the restart rule, which effectively limits drivers to five-day workweeks, is not based on adequate research and would cut trucking’s productivity.

The House bill also contains a provision that says states must allow rigs with two 33-foot-long trailers on interstate and other highways. Double trailers are currently limited to 28.5 feet each.

Both bills would establish national freight programs aimed at speeding the movement of goods, but the House bill would give states more discretion over the programs than the Senate bill.

The Senate bill would make leasing of existing highways, bridges or tunnels to private investors that impose tolls less attractive by changing the rules that afford hefty tax breaks.

As it is, investors can take depreciation tax write-offs in the first 15 years of leases that may last as long as 99 years. Under the amendment, those tax benefits would be stretched over 45 years.

If each chamber approves a reauthorization bill, the measures would go to a conference committee, the process under which the House and Senate iron out differences in the bills.

Some transportation advocates said the House provisions — such as those on oil drilling and transit funding — could prevent passage of a reauthorization plan this year.

For example, New York’s Democratic congressional representatives said the proposed change in transit funding would “massacre our mass transit system.”

The House bill would repeal a provision in the Surface Transportation Assistance Act signed by President Reagan that began directing a portion of diesel and gasoline taxes to public transit.

Today, transit receives 2.86 cents from the $24.4-cent diesel tax and the same amount from the 18.4-cent gasoline levy.

Under the House bill, transit would have to obtain $40 billion over five years from the general fund.

The Senate bill had an overall shortfall estimated at $12 billion, but the Finance Committee, the last committee to weigh in on the reauthorization bill, voted Feb. 7 to accept a group of small offsets presented by Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) that add up to more than $10 billion.

The offsets include taking some money from the leaking underground fuel tank program and an end to tax credits for paper and forestry businesses that produce what they call an alternative fuel known as “black liquor.”