Rep. Boustany: Finalizing Highway Bill ‘Difficult To Do Before Thanksgiving’
WASHINGTON — Presenting President Obama with a multiyear highway reauthorization bill before Thanksgiving — the goal outlined by transportation leaders on Capitol Hill — is too optimistic, a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee said Oct. 27.
“We need a clear pathway on how we would pay for this,” Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) told Transport Topics here at CG/LA Infrastructure Inc.’s seventh North American Infrastructure Leadership Forum Program. “There are a lot of moving parts that makes this difficult to do before Thanksgiving.”
Boustany said the tax-writing Ways and Means panel is poised to unveil in a few weeks a funding structure that would back the House’s six-year highway policy bill. The committee would have presented its funding plan sooner, but the shuffle in House GOP leadership delayed the process, he explained.
Ways and Means has jurisdiction over a road-building account that helps pay for programs authorized in a highway policy bill. That authorizing bill was reported out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week without a funding structure.
A significant number of House members “are not happy with the pay-fors” in a Senate bill that passed in July, Boustany said. The bill, backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), proposes as a pay-for selling barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Another offset proposal in the Senate bill would be to reduce dividends that the Federal Reserve pays to large banks.
“I think in the House we’re saying McConnell’s plan is Plan B,” Boustany added. “I’m hopeful we can have further discussions across the Capitol on how to really solve this.”
