Key Senate Panel Says Support Is Growing For Two-Year Highway Reauthorization Plan

WASHINGTON — Leaders of a key U.S. Senate committee said bipartisan support for their two-year transportation reauthorization plan is growing, although they have yet to introduce a bill.

“What we do have is a bill that can pass the Senate,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said during a July 21 hearing here.

“As is the case with all compromises, nobody gets everything they want,” he said.

Chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that while committee members have many different opinions on other issues, “We really do believe this is a basic function of the national government to address our infrastructure needs.”

Boxer also said funding for the nation’s transportation system is so important that, despite deep political divisions over other spending, Democrats and Republicans are uniting over transportation.

Even the “Gang of Six,” a bipartisan group of senators working to end the debt-limit crisis, has said it would dedicate $113 billion from the general fund over the next 10 years to the Highway Trust Fund, Boxer noted.

“They don’t mention any other specific program,” Boxer said.

The two-year, $109 billion proposal outlined May 25 by Boxer and Inhofe, along with Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and David Vitter (R-La.), does not yet have a funding source.

At the hearing, the senators heard from state officials and transportation advocates about the effect of failing to pass a highway bill. Although they did not say when they would introduce the measure they have talked about, they named the bill “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” or “MAP-21.”

Among the groups submitting written testimony to the committee was American Trucking Associations, which said it recognized the political realities in a sharply divided Congress.

“While it is clear that large increases in highway funding are necessary, we understand that under the current fiscal environment, simply continuing the program at current levels plus inflation, as proposed by this committee, is likely to be the best possible outcome,” ATA stated.

The federation urged that any highway bill should dedicate available funds in the Highway Trust Fund to the most pressing needs — the highway system — rather than to other projects such as bicycle paths.

“It is time to acknowledge that the program does not have sufficient resources to satisfy all constituencies,” ATA said.

Greg Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, testified that his group supports the quick passage of bills in both the Senate and House so that a conference committee can work on a final reauthorization plan.

“The worst possible outcome would be if the committee fails to make progress and we end up with a long-term extension bill that cuts funding and fails to reform the program,” Cohen said.

The most recent spending authorization law expired in 2009. Since then, Congress has passed short-term funding measures, the most recent of which runs out Sept. 30.

Sens. Boxer, Inhofe, Vitter and Baucus have unveiled portions of what they said the bill would include.

Among the provisions would be the consolidation of several highway programs, additional money for grants and loan guarantees that states can use on large highway projects, and changes in environmental and contract regulations to speed planning and construction time (5-30, p. 5).

The plan would also create a national freight program to designate freight corridors and provide money to states to help speed the movement of goods and alleviate congestion (6-6, p. 1).

The Boxer-Inhofe plan is one of three reauthorization proposals put forward this year, starting in February when President Obama unveiled his 2012 budget (2-21, p. 1).

The president outlined a six-year, $556 billion reauthorization plan.

In the House of Representatives, Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) has proposed a $230 billion plan that would cut transportation spending by at least a third from current spending levels over the next six years.

Mica said House rules prevented him from offering a reauthorization plan based on anything but projected revenue from the Highway Trust Fund.

Testifying last week at the Senate hearing, Donald James, chairman of Vulcan Materials Co., the nation’s largest supplier of road-building materials, said volume at the Alabama firm is down 50% and the number of employees down 30%.

If transportation funding is not kept at current levels, the job losses in the construction and transportation fields “for all 50 states . . . will be well over 400,000,” he said.

Without predictable and stable funding, states will have to defer investments in major, multiyear projects, said Susan Martinovich, Nevada Department of Transportation Director and president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Gary Ridley, Oklahoma secretary of transportation, said deep cuts would imperil two major interstate highway projects, in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.