Senate Funding Panel Takes Up Fiscal Year 2017 Transportation Bill April 19
The Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee on April 19 will consider a fiscal 2017 spending measure that is likely not to reflect the Obama administration’s funding priorities.
Last month, at a Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing, panel Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed concerns with the administration’s $98 billion funding request that would rely primarily on a $10.25-per-barrel oil tax.
“I am perplexed why the administration waited to put forth this plan now when Congress debated and passed a multi-year transportation reauthorization, which the president signed into law, just three months ago,” Collins told Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx at a hearing in March. Congress passed and Obama signed into law a five-year highway bill in December.
Meanwhile, a cadre of transportation groups have called on Collins and her colleagues on the panel to reject provisions to the funding bill that would change hours of service regulation for truckers. The groups have called for similar action in recent years, and they gained mild momentum after Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) urged Collins and other Republican appropriators to back off a proposal that would prevent states from enacting laws requiring companies to schedule meal-and-rest breaks for drivers or to pay drivers by the hour.
“We urge you to stop this destructive pattern of indulging special interest demands by tucking truck safety repeals and rollbacks into must-pass legislation to the detriment of public safety,” the groups, led by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, wrote on April 18.
The Senate’s fiscal 2017 transportation funding measure has yet to be unveiled. The Senate Appropriations Transportation-HUD Subcommittee meets at 10:30 a.m. on April 19. The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to markup the bill April 21 at 10:30 a.m.
