House T&I Leaders Decry Request to Postpone
Authorization 1½ Years; Unveil $500 Billion Plan
By LUCAS WALL
AASHTO Journal
June 19, 2009
Leading members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee yesterday released a proposal to authorize half a trillion dollars in federal spending on surface transportation over the next six years, strongly criticizing the Obama administration’s announcement Wednesday that it wants Congress to push back authorization for 18 months to focus on an immediate fix to the Highway Trust Fund that would last through December 2010, the end of the current congressional session.
The House T&I Committee has been working for many months to draft a blueprint to guide the next six years of federal transportation policy and spending. It released that document, an 86-page white paper that details key principles, at a news conference yesterday afternoon, the day after U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood visited privately with members of Congress. During those Wednesday meetings, LaHood said in a statement released to the media, he expressed the administration’s desire to push back consideration of a long-term authorization measure and to instead focus on enacting interim funding for the Highway Trust Fund, which is expected to run short of cash in two months.
“I am proposing an immediate 18-month highway reauthorization that will replenish the Highway Trust Fund,” LaHood said in the statement issued Wednesday afternoon. “If this step is not taken, the trust fund will run out of money as soon as late August and states will be in danger of losing the vital transportation funding they need and expect.”
LaHood went on to say that as part of the temporary authorization and Highway Trust Fund fix, he is proposing enacting “critical reforms to help us make better investment decisions with cost/benefit analysis, focus on more investments in metropolitan areas, and promote the concept of livability to more closely link home and work.” He reiterated the administration’s opposition to raising the gas tax during a recession, but provided no details on where the money would come from to shore up the trust fund. He said the administration wants the fix to be paid for, however, indicating it will not support a General Fund transfer as was done last September, when Congress sent $8 billion of general funds to the Highway Trust Fund to prevent insolvency.
Current estimates are that the Highway Trust Fund needs $5 billion to $7 billion to pay states for all obligations through September, the end of this fiscal year. Another $8 billion to $10 billion is needed for Fiscal Year 2010 unless a new revenue source is enacted or current spending levels are slashed.
“With the reality of our fiscal environment and the critical demand to address our infrastructure investments in a smarter, more focused approach, we should not rush [authorization] legislation,” LaHood said. “We should work together on a full reauthorization that best meets the needs of the country. The first step is making sure that the Highway Trust Fund is solvent. The next step is addressing our transportation priorities over the long run.”
AASHTO Executive Director John Horsley said interim funding is needed quickly to avert a financial crisis in the federal-aid highway program, but it’s also important to move ahead with a full long-term authorization measure.
The association supports Congress acting on an authorization bill “as fast as it can be passed and funded,” Horsley said. “It’s important for states to have stability and the ability to make long-term commitments.”
Idea to Postpone Authorization, Tie HTF Fix to Reforms Draws Mixed Reviews from Senators
LaHood received immediate support for his proposal to stabilize highway program funding until the end of next year from one key senator. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-CA, issued a statement Wednesday evening that she was pleased with the White House being proactive in working with Congress to address the looming Highway Trust Fund shortfall.
“As we work our way out of this recession, the last thing we want to do is drastically cut back on necessary transportation priorities,” Boxer said. “The White House proposal to replenish the trust fund until 2011 will keep the recovery and job creation moving forward and give us the necessary time to pass a more comprehensive multiyear transportation authorization bill with stable and reliable funding sources.”
The administration’s position, however, did not sit well with other senators who attended a transportation appropriations subcommittee hearing on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget request yesterday morning. LaHood, the sole witness at the 70-minute-long hearing, was forced to defend his proposal.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA and chairwoman of the subcommittee, told LaHood that critical details are missing from his plan.
“The department has not offered specific ways to replenish the balances of the Highway Trust Fund,” she said. “Furthermore, the department’s announcement offers very little insight into how it proposes to use cost/benefit analysis, focus investment in metropolitan areas, and promote the concept of livability. Although the department is interested in tying together a short-term fix for the Highway Trust Fund with reforms to our transportation programs, I have serious concerns about this approach. I do not oppose on principle the effort to improve federal transportation programs, but we cannot allow debates over these reforms to prevent us from saving the Highway Trust Fund in a timely manner.”
Murray said Congress has only five weeks remaining before its August recess and it would be a monumental challenge to enact substantial reforms to transportation programs as well as find additional money for the Highway Trust Fund in that short amount of time.
LaHood replied that it took Congress less than one month after President Barack Obama took office to enact the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included $48 billion for transportation projects.
“We are going to work with all of you to find the money to plug the trust fund and to pay for it,” LaHood said. “During our discussions, we’d like to talk about reform.”
LaHood vowed to return to Congress “very soon” with more details about how the administration proposes to pay for a trust fund fix and what specific reforms it will seek to go along with the new money. He did not commit to any specific timetable for providing this information, however.
Sen. Kit Bond, R-MO and the subcommittee’s ranking minority member, criticized LaHood for failing to address the looming $8.7 billion rescission in highway contract authority facing state transportation departments at the end of this fiscal year, as called for in the 2005 transportation authorization known as “SAFETEA-LU.”
“Without solving the rescission problem, there will be massive losses of jobs in the late summer when we need to be putting those projects to work,” Bond said.
Bond added that he was frustrated by the lack of information from the administration about how to pay for transportation programs during Fiscal Year 2010.
House Members Ignore LaHood’s Proposal, Roll Out Their Own Blueprint for Authorization
Just hours after the Senate subcommittee hearing adjourned, leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee appeared briefly at a press conference yesterday afternoon to release their authorization plan and express displeasure with the notion of delaying the bill by 1½ years as the administration called for Wednesday.
“The Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009: A Blueprint for Investment and Reform,” complete with two summary documents, is designed to “achieve specific national objectives: reduce fatalities and injuries on our nation’s highways, unlock the congestion that cripples major cities and the freight transportation network, provide transportation choices for commuters and travelers, limit the adverse effects of transportation on the environment, and promote public health and the livability of our communities,” according to the executive summary prepared by the committee.
Committee leadership proposes authorizing $500 billion over the next years for surface transportation: $337 billion for highways, $100 billion for mass transit, $50 billion for high-speed rail, and $13 billion for highway and motor-carrier safety programs. The high-speed rail component would be brand new for an authorization measure, following up on the $8 billion appropriated in the recovery act this year and the president’s budget request for $1 billion in additional rail funding for each of the next five years. The high-speed rail program would be financed outside of the Highway Trust Fund.
How any of these spending levels would be paid for is not addressed in the blueprint, and the T&I Committee does not plan to address revenue measures in its legislation. That task instead will fall to the House Ways and Means Committee. A Ways and Means subcommittee plans to meet next week to begin examining options for funding the transportation authorization. House T&I Committee James Oberstar, D-MN, has suggested implementing a fuel-tax increase once economic growth has returned for two consecutive quarters and then indexing the tax to the construction price index for future years. No figure has been mentioned on what the tax increase would be, however. (The federal gas tax is currently 18.4 cents per gallon and has not been adjusted since 1993.) Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-OR and chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, has floated the idea of taxing oil futures trades or adding a tariff on imported oil.
Oberstar and Rep. John Mica, R-FL and the T&I Committee’s ranking minority member, held up a shovel together at yesterday’s news conference to demonstrate their solidarity in pushing for a full six-year authorization bill this year before the SAFETEA-LU legislation expires Sept. 30. Both said they strongly oppose LaHood’s suggestion to punt the issue until late 2010.
“We are not in the business of delay,” Oberstar said. “Delay is unacceptable. Delay casts uncertainty on the program. If we delay the new authorization, states will hold back on new projects, and that will cost jobs.”
Oberstar and Mica noted the bill has the potential to create 6 million jobs over its six-year lifespan.
“I view this is the most critical jobs bill before Congress in the next year, and we’ve got to get it done before the next year,” Mica said. “We don’t want an 18-month bill that is a temporary patch. We want a 72-month solution that creates jobs. We are ready to go to work together to get roads and infrastructure built in this country and we are going to do it together one way or another come hell or high water.”
DeFazio later appeared at the press conference to express his strong dismay of the administration’s proposal.
“This 18-month delay will be an incredible disservice to the people of America,” DeFazio said. “Those 18 months of a lack of investment will cost millions of jobs at exactly the wrong time.”
Horsley, AASHTO’s executive director, congratulated Oberstar, Mica, DeFazio, and Rep. John Duncan, R-TN and ranking minority member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, for their leadership in releasing a blueprint that describes the highway and transit authorization legislation they intend to act on next week.
“We commend the committee leadership for moving the authorization process forward,” Horsley said. “Based on what they have described, there is much about the proposal that AASHTO may be able to support. However, there are aspects of the proposed legislation that raise serious concerns and which we will need to work with the House to refine.”
Subcommittee Review Expected Next Week
Oberstar said DeFazio’s subcommittee will meet next week to mark up the language in the bill, which is expected to top 800 pages. The full committee will consider the measure in July, followed by the Ways and Means Committee. By the end of July, the measure should move to the House floor, Oberstar predicted.
That schedule is uncertain, however. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, said Tuesday that the House’s busy agenda means the chamber will not be able to consider any transportation authorization measure before the month-long August recess. Hoyer noted that the House schedule is “so crammed full” with consideration of defense and intelligence authorizations, 12 appropriations bills for FY 2010, and massive and controversial bills addressing health care and climate change.
The blueprint release by the T&I Committee lays out the need for increased investment in roads, bridges, transit, and high-speed rail. It would consolidate dozens of existing funding categories into four core formulas for critical asset investment (highway and bridge maintenance), highway safety improvement, surface transportation flexible funding for new highway and transit capacity, and the environment (encompassing congestion mitigation, air-quality improvement, greenhouse-gas reduction, and improving the livability of communities). It would require performance standards and institute accountability measures focusing on safety, maintenance, and emission reductions.
“We will move from a highly prescriptive program to a performance and outcome based surface transportation program,” Oberstar said.
State DOTs support this approach.
“We embrace the idea of a performance-based system that reforms how the projects are selected and how they are delivered,” Horsley said. “Accountability to the taxpayer is something states like.”
Other blueprint highlights include creating an Office of Livability in the Federal Highway Administration to advance environmentally sustainable modes of transportation such as transit, walking, and bicycling; requiring states and metropolitan regions consider comprehensive street design principles to take into account the needs of all users; transforming the current transportation planning process by linking transportation planning with greenhouse-gas emission reductions; creating the position of undersecretary of intermodalism at U.S. DOT and giving that person authority over a new national infrastructure bank to fund large projects of regional or national significance; giving metropolitan planning organizations increased flexibility in spending transportation dollars as they desire; and adding an Office of Expedited Project Delivery in both FHWA and the Federal Transit Administration to speed important projects through the environmental review process, design, and construction.
The blueprint, associated documents, and a video of yesterday’s news conference are available under the “Issues in the Spotlight” section of transportation.house.gov.
Lucas Wall can be reached at lwall@aashto.org or 202-624-3626
