House Panel Leaders Resist Bid to Stall Highway Funding Bill

This story appears in the June 29 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — House transportation leaders appeared isolated last week, as several prominent senators endorsed a bid by the Obama administration to postpone working on a major surface transportation-funding bill until 2010.

“Unfortunately, recently and unexpectedly, the administration has said: ‘Let’s just wait 18 months,’ ” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chairman of the House Highway and Transit Subcommittee. “That’s not acceptable. Eighteen months of status quo means that we will not begin to address the backlog of maintenance of the legacy system and certainly won’t begin any new work.”

The administration’s call for an 18-month extension and replenishing of the Highway Trust Fund  “means no state will start a project that takes more than 18 months,” DeFazio said.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has backed the 18-month extension, coupled with a $20 billion infusion of funds, into the ailing Highway Trust Fund as an alternative to writing new legislation before the current authorization expires in September.

But Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said, “I like what the administration did with an 18-month time frame. . . . It gives certainty.”

Boxer said the length of the extension “gets us past the politics” and “gives us enough time to really reform how we do transportation.”

Boxer’s Republican counterpart, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, also backed the administration’s plan.

“To me, the 18-month extension makes sense,” he said.

However, Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said “We can move this ahead, notwithstanding the views of this administration, which puts us right back where we were before, in 2003 and 2004” when Congress extended expired transportation spending levels.

Oberstar questioned the Oba-ma administration’s priorities, arguing that a long-term highway bill would provide jobs and economic growth.

“They put more money out overnight on TARP than we put out in a whole year on our portion of the recovery act, but ours is working,” he said.

Oberstar and DeFazio’s fellow Democrats on the transportation panel wrote a letter urging the White House to pull back from the 18-month proposal.

“We have a significant opportunity to address the long-term issues impacting our highways and transit systems, and a drawn-out, piecemeal approach to fixing our transportation network will not work,” the House members wrote in the June 24 letter.

“We are ready. We have a transformational bill. We will move it through our committee,” they wrote. “We hope to work with your administration; we have requested and continue to welcome your input and participation in finalizing this important legislation in the weeks ahead.”

However, several key senators said they backed the administration’s proposal.

“I want to get to that transformational bill,” said Boxer, “but at the moment, with the trust fund so depleted, we have to figure out how to fill the Highway Trust Fund.”

Boxer said her committee, which has jurisdiction in the Senate over highway and transit funding, would begin moving an 18-month extension in July.

Other key Senate leaders have expressed support for the delay the administration is seeking.

An aide to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said the legislator was “supportive of the idea of a short-term extension, as long as it lays the groundwork for a long-term, robust bill that will create jobs and invest in the nation’s infrastructure.”

Baucus leads both the Finance Committee and the Environment and Public Works subcommittee that oversees transportation.

 LaHood told senators June 25 that the extension was necessary because “we have inherited a system that can no longer pay for itself.” He said the delay also would call for “a $20 billion cash infusion through March 2011” for the trust fund.

The administration, LaHood said, wanted to work with Congress on a full reauthorization, but “we do not believe that this important legislation should be rushed.”

He said the new authorization must include “critical reforms,” including in the way the federal government funds highways, because “tying revenues to an unpredictable funding source like the gas tax” won’t work.

“The Treasury’s General Fund, a national infrastructure bank, public-private partnerships and, in some instances, user fees are things we must consider over and above our current financing approach,” he said.

Oberstar and House leaders weren’t entirely without allies in the Senate.

“Does anyone in this administration hear from the folks out there that are in the business, that have all come together and said we need a robust highway bill now?” asked Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works subcommittee on transportation and infrastructure. “The way to get the job done is to pass a bill now.”

Voinovich endorsed moving ahead with Oberstar’s bill, saying the House chairman has held “over 50 hearings and spent two years on this. . . . It is a terrific piece of legislation. They’re going to mark it up in the House and . . . I think we should look at it.”

Boxer rebuffed that suggestion, saying that until funding can be identified, she was not prepared to move a bill forward.