House Panel to Begin Highway Bill Work; Anthony Foxx to Testify on Transportation Funding
This story appears in the Feb. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.
A House appropriations subcommittee will embark this week on the ambitious task of stitching together a fiscal 2016 highway and transit funding bill that can win support in both chambers of Congress before the current fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
A Feb. 26 hearing by the House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee will be the start of that elusive funding process, with Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx as the committee’s witness. A follow-up appropriations hearing in the Senate is scheduled for next month.
The hearing will give Foxx a forum to address congressional funding writers, known as appropriators, for the first time since the Obama administration unveiled details of its six-year, $478 billion transportation reauthorization proposal.
Neither panel Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) nor ranking member Rep. David Price
(D-N.C.) have yet commented on the administration’s transportation budget proposal. But Republican leaders have pledged to return Congress to a regular funding process, known as regular order, which entails approving funding bills for each federal agency instead of opting for an expansive short-term measure.
The significant spending plan would be financed partly through a one-time 14% tax on corporate earnings kept overseas. The full budget plan, when it is formally released this spring, would be an upgrade of last year’s “Grow America Act.”
A recent 30-year outlook by the Department of Transportation argues that additional transportation dollars are needed to pay for new infrastructure, such as truck freight corridors.
At a meeting with reporters at DOT’s headquarters on Feb. 12, Foxx said he has reminded lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the agency and transportation programs operate better without an interruption in funding.
“Having talked to folks one-on-one on both sides of the aisle, there’s genuine interest in trying to get something done. And we’ll keep our shoulder to the wheel in trying to help them get there,” the secretary said.
At the hearing, House Republican lawmakers probably will shoot down an administration proposal to establish a trust fund that would guarantee funding for passenger rail programs in addition to highways and transit systems, replacing the Highway Trust Fund, senior congressional aides told Transport Topics.
Also, several Republicans are expected to defend the suspension of a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration requirement that truck drivers take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m.
during a 34-hour restart. That suspension ends when a short-term funding law expires later this year.
In December, President Obama signed into law a $1 trillion fiscal 2015 funding bill to fund federal agencies through Sept. 30.
That was the most recent short-term measure enacted. In recent years, Congress has deviated from its regular funding process and passed funding extensions to avoid a shutdown of the federal government. In 2013, lawmakers did not agree on a funding measure by a fall deadline, which led to a brief shutdown of federal agencies.
Trucking industry leaders have expressed concern over the possibility that Congress will again advance a short-term funding measure. Such measures deny businesses the ability to make long-term plans, industry officials say.
