Senate Republicans clashed with the Biden administration Wednesday over the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in highway funding included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, advising governors in a new letter effectively to ignore the administration’s guidance on how to allocate funding for highway projects and expansion.
At issue is a December Department of Transportation memo that encouraged states to prioritize the highway funds for projects that “improve the condition and safety of existing transportation infrastructure” before adding new highway lanes, which had been a sticking point for some Republican lawmakers in negotiating the legislation.
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That guidance touched off a contentious back and forth with GOP lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who sought to rebut the notion that the Department of Transportation memo has any power.
In a letter sent to governors Wednesday, McConnell and Capito sought to dismiss the December memo as an “internal document” that “has no effect of law.” States, they added, “should treat it as such.”
“We were disappointed to read [the memo],” the two lawmakers wrote. “Unfortunately, the [memorandum] attempts to implement a wish list of policies not reflected in the” trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.
“These policies, such as discouraging projects that increase highway capacity and prioritizing projects that advance non-motorized transportation options, differ from the provisions negotiated and agreed to in the law.”
When crafting the bill last year, Democrats sought to impose additional guardrails on the public works spending, including limiting the expansion of additional highway lanes. The effect, Democrats hoped, would be to encourage states to use the infrastructure funds to improve existing highways and encourage public transit options, a key priority for the Biden administration as it moves to cut down on carbon emissions and encourage more environmentally friendly methods of transportation.
But most of those provisions were dropped during negotiations as Democrats sought to push the bill through Congress and compromise with Republicans, who insisted the funds be given to the states without any preconditions or project-specific strings attached.
As a result, Republicans say, states should be able to use the highway funding as they see fit.
But McConnell and Capito aren’t the only Republicans voicing their mounting concerns. Last month, 16 Republican governors signed a letter urging Biden to allow states to have flexibility in how they distribute the funds.
“Attempts to disallow the use of funding for general purpose widening projects would be biased against rural states and states with growing populations,” the governors said, adding, “excessive consideration of equity, union memberships, or climate as lenses to view suitable projects would be counterproductive.”
Last week, the DOT guidance also prompted criticism from Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom supported the $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
The memo, Romney said, “flies in the face of our intent and our needs.”
Graham echoed this sentiment, arguing that it “runs counter to congressional intent by discouraging the use of federal dollars by the states for new highway capacity projects.”
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At the White House last week, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas pleaded: “Send us the money. Give us flexibility … We will spend it, and you can audit us.”
