Talks Over Long-Term Highway Bill Founder as Deadline to Renew Roads Funding Looms
This story appears in the June 18 print edition of Transport Topics.
Senate Democrats, contractors and other transportation advocates ramped up their rhetoric and the pressure last week in a last-ditch attempt to get a long-term highway bill passed before a temporary transportation funding extension expires.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said at a June 13 rally on the National Mall that House Republicans are standing in the way of a bill that must be passed by the extension’s June 30 expiration date.
“Anyone who stands in the way of that, just note, the people of America will know exactly who you are, because we’re not talking about 1,000 jobs or 6,000 jobs, we’re talking about 3 million jobs,” Boxer said.
“Construction is always the way we get out of these recessions,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), one of several Senate Democrats who rallied on the Mall with cement contractors and laborers.
“My guess is [House] Speaker [John] Boehner wants to get this done, but there are 100 people, militants, radical extremists, who actually believe the federal government should not be involved in highways,” Schumer said.
Boehner (R-Ohio) could not persuade conservative Republicans to support a transportation bill in the House this year, but did manage to get the House to pass an extension of current transportation law to go to a compromise conference panel on the bill the Senate passed (3-19, p. 1).
House-Senate conferees have not, however, produced a bill, which must pass both chambers by the end of June or another temporary funding extension will be needed to avoid shutting down transportation projects.
Senators at the rally said a contingent of House Republicans is blocking a bill that could put millions of people to work.
“I’ll tell it like it is,” Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said. “I have heard from some Republicans that there are people arguing that they shouldn’t pass this bill because it might help President Obama because people might go back to work and you’ll see an uptick in the numbers of people employed.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said, “If House Republicans were concerned about falling job numbers, they should be grabbing this bill and running it to the speaker’s desk to pass it.”
After the rally, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) issued a statement saying he remained “hopeful” of reaching a compromise with the Senate.
Mica also said he is “disappointed” Senate conferees have not moved “significantly” on what he called House reform proposals and that the “Senate leadership appears unwilling to compromise . . . on the Keystone XL pipeline.”
House Republicans want any transportation bill to mandate that the pipeline be built. Senate Democrats have said the pipeline does not belong in the highway bill.
Pressure also was building for a bill last week via a radio ad campaign run in the districts of four key conference committee members, all Republican representatives, urging them to pass a bill.
The ads were run by a coalition of construction and labor groups and targeted Reps. David Camp (R-Mich.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) and Pat Tiberi (R-Ohio).
Boehner recently suggested if a bill is not passed by June 30, he may support a six-month funding extension, an idea that drew a sharp response last week in a letter to Congress from transportation advocates — including American Trucking Associations — contractors and state officials.
“This approach could further exacerbate the Highway Trust fund’s financial crisis and cause states to cut back on transportation investments during what should be the peak construction season,” the June 13 letter said.
