House Passes 5-Month Highway Funding Bill
In a rare show of bipartisanship, the House on July 15 passed a five-month extension of federal highway funding authority, giving the Senate less than two weeks to act on the measure before current authority expires.
The House advanced the Republican-backed bill by a 312-119 vote. Despite strong objections from dozens of Democrats in the minority, in the end 132 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.
The legislation, sponsored by the chairmen of the tax and transportation policy committees, also garnered support from the White House.
The short-term patch would approve $8 billion for the Highway Trust Fund to ensure its solvency through mid-December. The measure is backed by $5 billion from certain tax-compliance provisions as well as $3 billion from a two-year extension of an airline security fee.
“We want to do a multiyear highway bill, and typically a multiyear highway bill means a six-year bill, and that is our aspiration and our goal. We know we’re not going to write that bill in the next two weeks. We know we need at least two or three months to write that bill,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the bill’s co-sponsor and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The trust fund falls under that committee’s jurisdiction.
The bill moves next to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has triggered a procedural motion to begin floor proceedings on highway funding July 21.
The degree of support for a short-term patch in the Senate remains to be seen since top Republicans, such as Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairmen of the Commerce and Environment and Public Works committees, respectively, have advanced multiyear highway bills.
Last week, the Commerce Committee approved a six-year transportation safety bill, and in June the EPW panel advanced a six-year surface transportation bill. The two measures will be combined if McConnell schedules floor time for them.
In the periphery, tea party-backed Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, a presidential aspirant, have threatened to filibuster a highway policy extension measure if it is linked to reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank — the federal agency established more than eight decades ago to help finance exports by providing lending assistance to numerous American companies.
Prior to the House vote, Republican leaders indicated that having the short-term funding patch would give them additional time to craft a long-term bill.
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), a co-sponsor, stressed that without the measure “transportation jobs across the country will be at risk.” And Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), chairman of the House Rules Committee, added the patch offers “the time we need to develop a long-term strategy that allows the construction that is already in progress to continue as we work towards a plan that guarantees structural stability for years to come.”
A cascade of Democrats took to the House floor to criticize the GOP measure before voting on passage. Vermont Rep. Pete Welch called the patch a “joke of a short-term plan.”
Democrats also sought support on the floor for a version of the Obama administration’s six-year, $478 billion “new and improved” Grow America transportation plan. But the House rejected it 244-185 along party lines. Only one Democrat, New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, sided with Republicans.
Speaking on the floor, Pascrell criticized Republicans for proceeding with the patch: “What are we writing here, a new Magna Carta? They’ve had four years now.”
Ways and Means member Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) also voiced frustration: “It’s embarrassing we’re at this point once again,” he said. “There’s a simple solution to the impasse — the one President Reagan championed in 1982, the one that six states led by Republican governors have enacted already this year — an increase in the gas tax.”
Trucking industry leaders and many transportation groups have, in fact, urged Congress to raise taxes on fuels to boost the Highway Trust Fund. Republican leaders, however, have rejected tax increases.
The trust fund allows the Department of Transportation to reimburse states for big-ticket infrastructure projects. The fund is mostly backed by fuel taxes, which Congress has not raised since 1993.
The federal tax on diesel is 24.4 cents per gallon, and on gasoline, the tax is 18.4 cents.
On July 14, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told state transportation leaders that, absent congressional action by July 31, the Federal Highway Administration would be unable to reimburse states for certain big-ticket projects starting Aug. 1.
“Congress’ failure to pass a long-term bill is of great concern to all of us who are engaged in the work of building and maintaining our nation’s transportation infrastructure,” Foxx wrote. “Careening from self-inflicted crisis to self-inflicted crisis undermines our system.”
