As they return from their two-week recess, lawmakers are expected to begin in earnest to try to hash out a long-term plan to fund the nation’s roads and bridges.
Both the House and Senate have been working behind closed doors on multi-year plans, but in the past decade, it has been nearly impossible to win support for any agreement longer than two years thanks to an ever-shrinking pool of money to pay for the projects. And this year’s prospects don’t look much better.
Congress is far from finding agreement on how to come up with the additional revenue, but they won’t have much time to act. The current measure to fund the Highway Trust Fund, signed into law less than a year ago, expires May 31.
“We are currently working on the transportation reauthorization bill,” a spokeswoman from the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee told the Washington Examiner.
House lawmakers also are crafting their own proposal.
“We are still working on a long-term bill,” a House Transportation Committee aide told the Examiner. “That would be our ideal.”
But industry insiders and Capitol Hill aides acknowledge that despite efforts to craft a long-term measure the president can sign into law, Congress is far more likely to pass a reauthorization bill that lasts merely months, perhaps only until Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
“It’s extremely unlikely that Congress will be able to pass any kind of comprehensive bill by the end of May,” a transportation lobbyist who requested anonymity told the Examiner.
Congress last passed a long-term transportation reauthorization bill in 2005. Since it expired in September 2009, Congress has renewed the funding authorization in more than a dozen months-long patches as well as a two-year measure in 2012.
The difficulty has not always stemmed from partisan differences, said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., who was chairman of the House Transportation Committee in 2005 and helped author the last long-term measure.
“The Democrats could not pass a five-year authorization bill when they had the Senate, the House and the White House in their control,” in 2009 and 2010, Mica noted.
Without a longterm spending blueprint, state transportation departments have struggled to complete major projects, such as new bridges and highway construction, that require multiyear funding and planning. Instead, they are abandoning ambitious transportation projects and settling on smaller maintenance and upkeep.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree they need to come to an agreement on a multiyear blueprint and abandon short-term patches.
“We need a long-term bill to provide certainty for states and other non-federal partners to accomplish large projects,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said at a recent hearing.
Crumbling infrastructure has had a significant impact on most Americans, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told Shuster at the hearing.
“Americans spend 5.5 billion hours in traffic each year, costing families more than $120 billion in extra fuel and lost time,” Foxx said. “American businesses pay $27 billion a year in extra freight transportation costs, increasing shipping delays and raising prices on everyday products.”
About 61,000 bridges across the country are deteriorating, according to a new analysis of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database.
Agreeing there is a problem is one thing, but finding a solution lawmakers can agree on has become nearly impossible.
The funding source for the nation’s transportation projects has long been an 18.4 cent federal gas tax. But over the years, the gas tax has become a less significant funding source thanks to inflation and reduced gas consumption, as vehicles get more fuel-efficient and people drive less.
While some Democrats are pushing for an increase of up to 20 cents in the federal gas tax, neither Republicans nor most Democrats have shown enthusiasm for a tax increase.
Republicans, who run both chambers, also reject the idea of taxing drivers based on their vehicle mileage, which is another proposal.
President Obama said last year he is opposed to a gas tax increase, instead pitching a plan to fix the nation’s crumbling bridges and roads with a one-time, 14 percent tax on overseas corporate profits.
That plan was rejected by the GOP, which is hoping to overhaul the corporate tax code. They would use a possible repatriation tax to lower tax rates overall, not for infrastructure.
In February, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan said Obama has changed his mind and is now willing to work with Congress on a gas tax increase to pay for infrastructure.
But Republicans who run both transportation committees appear to be looking for other ways to contain growing transportation costs that do not involve new taxes.
Shuster, at the hearing, said innovation, accelerated project construction and reduced governmental red tape could help reduce infrastructure costs. He didn’t mention the need for new taxes.
“A bill that is not fiscally responsible,” Shuster said, “simply will not pass this Congress.”
