House Shifts Highway Strategy, Seeks Compromise With Senate

The House of Representatives last week abandoned its efforts to pass a long-term transportation reauthorization bill of its own and voted to go to conference on the $109 billion, two-year bill already approved by the Senate.

House leaders maneuvered the contentious reauthorization debate into a potential compromise by gathering enough Republican and Democratic votes to send a new temporary funding extension bill to a House-Senate conference committee.

If agreed to by Senate conferees, the extension would ensure funding for highway projects during the summer construction season.

“This legislation will help move the process forward in working to resolve differences with the Senate,” Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a statement after the extension vote.

However, a more pessimistic note was sounded by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who said before the vote that the House and Senate were too far apart on transportation to agree on a long-term bill this year.

“What the House should do is do what the Senate did, do a bipartisan bill,” LaHood said at a transportation conference the morning of the vote. “If they don’t want to do that, pass the Senate bill,” LaHood said.

LaHood spokesman Justin Nisly said after the vote that the secretary stood by his earlier comments.

The new House extension bill — the second within weeks — passed April 18 on a 293-127 vote and would fund highway and public transit programs from July 1 to Sept. 30.

Last month, two days before funding ran out and the nation’s transportation system would have shut down, Congress voted to extend funding through June 30.

The latest temporary extension is the 10th since September 2009 when the nation’s latest long-term transportation reauthorization law ran out after six years.

The Senate passed its bipartisan transportation reauthorization bill in March, but House Republicans failed to agree on a long-term bill of their own and refused to allow a vote on the Senate bill.

Some Democrats said during  the floor debate last week on the new extension that they were supporting the measure in order to keep the reauthorization “ball rolling” and construction workers employed.

“Taking Republicans at their word that they are serious about moving this process forward, passage . . . will allow us to go to conference with the Senate on their

. . . bill which passed with the support of three-quarters of the Senate,” said Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee.

For the trucking industry, abandonment of the five-year reauthorization plan introduced earlier this year by Mica was a disappointment.

“We agree, however, that we needed the House to pass a measure so that the Senate and House can go to conference,” said Sean McNally, spokesman for American Trucking Associations.

Mica’s five-year bill contained a provision supported by trucking that would have required states to allow 53-foot long trailers on interstate highways.

The five-year bill also called for a field study of the new federal hours of service rule that allows drivers to restart their weekly driving period after a 34-hour off-duty period.

Carriers said the 34-hour restart has cost and operational implications that will cut into their productivity.

Some provisions important to trucking that were in the Mica bill, however, are also in the Senate bill. Among the provisions are one to create a clearinghouse that would allow employers to check truck drivers’ drug and alcohol test results and another to establish crashworthiness standards for trucks.

The Senate bill would also provide $2 billion a year in funding for highway freight-specific projects and would mandate that all trucks have electronic on board recorders within a year of the bill’s passage. The freight plan and the EOBR mandate are supported by ATA.

House Republicans included in their extension bill a provision that would require construction of the Keystone Pipeline, although the Democrat-controlled Senate may not agree to that.

Environmentalists and President Obama oppose construction of the northern section of the pipeline to carry tar sands oil from Canada to Oklahoma and, from there, to Gulf Coast refineries.

Obama has signed off on construction plans for the pipeline’s southern section between Oklahoma and the Gulf.

Like the trucking industry, other transportation advocates said they were disappointed that the House could not agree on a long-term funding bill but relieved to see negotiations moved to conference.

John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said AASHTO’s goal is a well funded, long-term transportation bill with essential policy reforms.

“However, the top priority is to ensure stability in the Federal-aid Highway and Transit programs for the immediate future,” Horsley said in a statement after the extension vote.

The two-year Senate bill would only authorize transportation funding through September 2013. But the House made the right decision by voting to negotiate on the Senate bill, Edward Wytkind, president of the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO, said in a statement.

Negotiations give “us a chance to complete the biggest jobs bill pending in this Congress at a time when our transportation system is collapsing and millions are still out of work,” Wytkind said in the statement.