LaHood Sees Road Bill in 2010, but Funding Questions Remain

This story appears in the Jan. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week he expected the Obama administration and Congress would agree on a surface transportation bill that could be finalized before the end of the year.

And while LaHood said it was up to Congress to decide how to fund the bill, the chairman of the committee charged with writing the transport bill in the House — Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) — blamed the Obama administration and the Senate for scuttling the bill so far.

Despite the tension, both Oberstar and LaHood called for a second round of stimulus spending to keep American contractors working and to prevent more job losses later this year.

“President Obama wants a ro-bust, comprehensive transportation bill that meets the needs of America. The problem is that bill costs between 400 and 500 billion dollars,” LaHood said Jan. 13 at the Transportation Research Board’s meeting here. “We want to work with Congress . . . to find the money to pay for it. We will get there; I believe we will get there this year.”

After his speech, LaHood told reporters that figuring out how to bridge the roughly $100 billion to $150 billion funding gap was “up to Congress.”

“Congress is going to write the bill, and we’re going to work with Congress,” he said.

Aides to LaHood also said last week that DOT was working to solve the problems that have stalled the bill (click here for related story).

In an interview with Transport Topics Jan. 11, Oberstar, one the primary authors of the bill, laid the blame squarely at the feet of the White House and the Senate.

“I think if the White House had said, ‘We’re onboard with some increase in the user fee plus some other funding mechanisms,’ and the Senate had gone along with that, we’d have had a bill signing already,” Oberstar said. The user fee he referred to is the tax on fuel.

Legislation authorizing transportation spending expired in September 2009, but Congress has passed a series of short-term extensions, so far carrying the program through late February.

The Obama administration in June asked for an 18-month delay in reauthorizing the surface transportation program; LaHood has repeatedly said the administration opposes raising fuel taxes to cover spending in a new bill.

Oberstar told TT that he and other committee leaders have “laid out several options . . . [but] all those methods have some kind of problem.”

He specifically cited issues with a proposal to tax speculative oil trades and a per-barrel tax on imported oil.

When asked about getting a bill this year, Oberstar said he was a “realistic optimist.”

“The problem is not our bill, or the House calendar; it is getting the White House and the Senate on board with a funding mechanism,” he said, adding that pressure from highway user groups and from the business community could do that.

Oberstar said such groups as American Trucking Associations, the Chamber of Commerce and others support a fuel-tax increase. “They are certainly ahead of the White House and the Senate [in understanding] the urgency of moving a long-term investment.”

“The question is: Will the powers at the White House, whoever they are, starting with the president, loosen up now and recognize that we need a follow-on stimulus and we need a long-term investment program to create stability for the contractors?” he said.

In his TRB speech, LaHood said the administration favors a second stimulus bill featuring more investment in transportation infrastructure.

“The House passed a new jobs bill at the end of 2009 and we’re hoping the Senate will soon take up its own version,” he said. LaHood added that a second stimulus was “crucial because although the economy is starting to recover, the jobless rate is still far too high.”

Oberstar said the House pushed through a jobs bill with $27.5 billion in new highway spending to extend the stimulus and curb job losses later this year as earlier stimulus funds run out.

“If the stimulus isn’t extended, [construction companies] will have layoffs of up to 40% or more in nearly every one of those major companies,” he said, citing a report by the Associated General Contractors of America.

LaHood said a jobs bill should include “a robust investment in highways, transit, marine highways, aviation and rail.”

The House returned to session last week, but the Senate does not return until this week, and it was unclear when it might move a jobs bill or begin work on a long-term highway bill.

“Nothing has moved in the Senate because they got all wrapped around the axle with health care,” Oberstar lamented. “The filibuster and the delaying tactics in the Senate worked to slow down the health-care bill, but it slowed down the whole rest of the legislative agenda.”