Congress Reaches Late Deal on Highway Trust Fund Fix

This story appears in the Aug. 3 print edition of Transport Topics.

The House moved quickly last week to shift $7 billion to the nearly depleted Highway Trust Fund, and the Senate followed suit, although Senate leaders continued to advocate for extending current highway legislation for 18 months.

The House action just before adjourning for its August recess was the latest skirmish between House and Senate Democrats over how best to deal with renewing transportation legislation that expires Sept. 30.

The Senate voted 79-17 on July 30 to approve the House bill.

The House legislation, which passed 363-68 on July 29, does not extend the current highway law. House leaders are pushing for a rewrite of the six-year authorizing legislation, an action the Senate wants to postpone by extending current law.

“I think Round One goes to the House. There’s no other game in town after the House leaves for the August recess,” said Mike Joyce, a lobbyist with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

“I regret that we’ve had to take this step. We should have spent this week passing the committee’s bill for the future of surface transportation,” said Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “We will do that in September. This is an infusion, not an extension. We are not standing for the whims of the other body or of the administration for an extension of time.”

Oberstar’s spokesman, Jim Berard, said the bill’s passage was “a win, in that it does separate the two issues,” of the ailing trust fund and the 18-month extension of the current highway law favored by the Senate and the Obama administration.

“There is a split between the Senate approach and the House approach,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said July 30. “The House approach, which I don’t agree with, is to just keep making these short-term extensions as a way of forcing us to act in the long term. But we all know that we have to figure out the funding source here that will take us through the next five or six years and it’s going to take time and we need to do it right.”

However, Boxer said she supported the House bill because “they have told us that if we don’t take this, that we are not going to be able to ensure that that Highway Trust Fund is solvent.”

Despite Senate protestations, and some Republican opposition in the House, senior House Democrats continued to push for a longer-term bill.

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s panel on select revenue measures, said July 29 he expected the House to address

the question of how to fund the $450 billion Oberstar proposal “in about another month.”

“I understand the hesitance of some of our colleagues to talk about increasing fund revenues in this economy, but I want to assure you they will be at every groundbreaking, and they will be at every ribbon-cutting, even though they question the financing that we will propose down the road,” Neal said.

The question of how to fund a six-year reauthorization has been a sticking point between the House and Senate. Boxer has said she will not move a bill forward until a funding solution is found, but she also has said she opposes a large fuel tax increase.

The Obama administration has said repeatedly it opposes raising the fuel tax and, late last month, a senior DOT official told Neal’s subcommittee that the administration opposes any increase in taxes to raise highway trust fund revenue.

Because of that opposition, Joyce said the Senate might prevail in the longer fight over a full six-year bill.

“But the reality is that Round Two . . . begins as soon as Congress steps foot back in town after Labor Day,” he said, “and without a true, politically feasible way to pay for a $450 billion-to-$500 billion authorization bill that gives members of Congress cover with the upcoming 2010 elections, I think Round Two may end up in the Senate’s favor.”

David Bauer, a senior vice president at the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, predicted a compromise between the Senate’s desire for an 18-month delay and the House’s push to complete a long-term bill.