Mica Says New Road Bill to Be Approved Before End of Fiscal Year on Sept. 30

This story appears in the April 4 print edition of Transport Topics.

ARLINGTON, Va. — House Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) told a group of shippers he plans to get a long-term transportation reauthorization bill passed before Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

Speaking here on March 29 at a National Industrial Transportation League forum, Mica said a bill could be on the House floor during May and that he will take a knife to wasteful transportation programs.

“Anyone who talks about less than a six-year bill, I’ll take them outside and beat the crap out of them,” Mica said.

Mica also said he will look to reallocate money set aside for big-budget projects that are sitting idle and find ways to streamline sluggish federal approval processes that can hold back construction projects for years.

Several House and Senate staffers said they are working on legislation that would involve deep cuts for some transportation programs and are hoping to get a draft reauthorization bill soon to their respective committee chairmen.

“We will be focusing all next month on writing a bill,” said Jennifer Hall, Republican counsel for the House Transportation subcommittee on Highways and Infrastructure. “The goal is to bring a bill to the House floor in early summer.”

The Senate is on a similar timeline, said Alex Herrgott, a Republican professional staff member on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

“If we don’t get a bill passed out of the Senate by early summer, the appropriations bill will dominate the rest of the summer,” Herrgott said. “Passing a bill out of the Senate in late summer will not leave enough time to conference to reconcile the drastically different versions between the House and the Senate.”

However, several panelists at the forum said they doubted Congress would approve a long-term bill this year.

The fact that members will be debating how to cut programs rather than adding programs will slow progress on a long-term bill, said panelist Janet Kavinoky, director of transportation infrastructure for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We would have to have bills reported out of the House by Memorial Day, ready to report to the floor or get to the Senate floor in June, and then have a world-record-paced conference to get a bill done by September,” Kavinoky said. “If we don’t get a bill done, we’re facing a big hole in the Highway Trust Fund sometime in the 2012 time frame.”

If a long-term highway bill can be passed, it would avert the eighth extension since the most recent legislation originally expired. The latest extension, passed several weeks ago, funds transportation programs though the end of September.

Mica and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, delivered a different message at March 30 news conference, stressing their commitment to work together to get legislation passed.

Boxer said, “at this time of bipartisan strife, we are here to say we have to move forward on a bipartisan bill.”

“This is an honest effort,” Mica said. “We have millions of Americans losing their homes. So much can be put right if Congress can get [reauthorization] right.”

Mica said the need to speed up the process of putting transport funding to work, while Boxer illustrated the value of innovative infrastructure funding such as a $546 million Los Angeles transit project that was made possible by an investment of just $20 million in federal funds.

Meanwhile, Mica also said he opposes increasing the federal fuel tax to plug revenue gaps for highway programs.

Couldn’t there be an argument to justify raising the tax? Mica was asked during a question-and-answer session.

“I need 218 votes in the House,” Mica replied. “218 votes is the best argument you can come up with. I don’t even have the votes on the committee. It’s off the table.”

Another member of the audience pressed Mica harder on the fuel-tax issue.

“The reality that we have is I cannot pass a gas tax increase, and I will not propose one,” Mica replied.

Another member of the audience asked Mica if there was a scenario where he might include a provision allowing for larger trucks in the reauthorization bill.

“No,” Mica said. “Next question.”

Also at the conference, Polly Trottenberg, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s assistant secretary for transportation policy, declined to detail how the Obama administration planned to plug a multibillion-dollar revenue shortfall in its proposed $556 billion long-term reauthorization budget.

So far, the administration has not said how it will fund its recommendation for increases in transportation programs.

“I think the future of how we’re going to pay for increases in our program is probably going to have to be part of a bigger debate here looking at a lot of the things that we’re investing money in and are not going to be investing money in,” Trottenberg said.

Senior reporter Rip Watson contributed to this report.