Tag: highway trust fund
Highway Funds In Jeopardy As House And Senate Differ On Way Forward

Highway Funds In Jeopardy As House And Senate Differ On Way Forward

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — A congressional standoff over how to renew an expiring highway-funding bill pushed the Senate into a rare and heated Sunday session, but the legislative path forward remains unclear, leaving federal transportation projects hanging in the balance.

Adding to the complication were votes Sunday on several unrelated amendments to the Senate highway bill. One to repeal the Affordable Care Act was rejected and another to resuscitate the Export-Import Bank advanced toward approval.

But the fate of the six-year, $337 billion Senate bill, which could face a final vote later this week, remained in doubt since it is starkly different from a stopgap House bill passed earlier this month, which would extend transportation funding for five months while a broader compromise is negotiated.

The stalemate over authorization for the nation’s highway program, which expires July 31, is not so much a traditional partisan divide, but rather a tussle between the House and Senate. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans, but they’ve taken different approaches to the problem.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx warned that billions of dollars in transportation projects and thousands of jobs across the nation are at risk if a compromise is not reached. Only days remain before House members leave for the summer recess, and money runs out at the end of the month.

“This country is hungering for robust transportation,” Foxx said Friday. “The problems of congestion that have gotten worse over the last several years — the potholes in the roads, the bridges that need to be repaired — I could go on and on.”

“I’ve just been to so many places around the country where traffic is getting worse,” he said. “People are beginning to draw the line, follow the bread crumbs back to Washington.”

Transportation funding problems have been building for years, partly because the 18-cents-a gallon federal gas tax has remained flat while vehicle fuel efficiency has increased, leading to repeated shortfalls in the highway account.

Congress has repeatedly patched the highway trust fund, but has been unable to agree on new revenue to cover the costs of repairing and upgrading the nation’s old infrastructure.

Senators have devised a far-reaching bill that would revamp transportation policy over the next six years, and provide funding for road, freight and public transit projects for half that time.

But the bipartisan Senate plan, championed by Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, the top Democrat on the committee, and Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman, would be paid for by revenue cobbled from various federal sources.

The House dismisses this approach, and approved its own stopgap bill that would replenish the highway fund through December — a temporary fix while a bipartisan group led by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., works on a longer-term solution.

Ryan, with backing from a key Democrat, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, wants to overhaul the international tax code and use taxes generated on overseas corporate profits for the highway fund.

“The House has passed a responsible bill,” said Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio. House members have “a lot of concern” about the Senate legislation, he said.

The House’s approach, though, faces uncertain odds because the politics of rewriting tax policy is complicated. It is also one rejected by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who prefers a broader review of the entire corporate tax code.

On Sunday, the consideration of the transportation bill was complicated further by McConnell’s decision to tack on an unrelated measure resurrecting the Export-Import Bank onto the legislation.

The leader had bucked his conservative flank led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and promised a vote on the 81-year-old bank, which provides financing for foreign buyers of U.S. exports but has been unable to make new loans since Congress allowed its authority to lapse last month.

Conservatives backed by powerful groups aligned with the billionaire Koch brothers oppose the Export-Import Bank as an example of corporate welfare, but it is supported by business leaders, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. President Barack Obama and most Democrats also back the bank.

On Sunday, senators agreed 67-26 to advance an amendment to reauthorize the bank through 2019, virutally ensuring the amendment would be the Senate transportation bill.

Tempers flared Sunday as McConnell and his top lieutenants tried to publicly tamp down a conservative rebellion over the bank, but Cruz doubled down on his earlier assertion that McConnell had essentially told “a lie” by allowing the vote.

In a speech Friday, Cruz, who is running for president, blasted McConnell for allowing the Ex-Im bank amendment but blocking other amendments that Cruz and others wanted to offer.

In particular, Cruz was prevented from offering amendments that would stop Obama’s immigration actions and halt the emerging nuclear deal with Iran unless Tehran frees U.S. hostages and recognizes Israel.

Cruz had publicly accused McConnell of telling “a lie” when McConnell denied earlier this year that he had agreed to give Ex-Im Bank supporters another chance to resuscitate the bank by attaching an amendment to must-pass legislation like the highway bill. Cruz said Sunday’s vote was proof of such a secret deal.

“Speaking the truth about actions is entirely consistent with civility,” Cruz said Sunday, quoting novelist George Orwell, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

The maneuver may not succeed in saving the bank since presumably now House and Senate leaders will need to negotiate some sort of compromise highway bill that may not include the Ex-Im Bank amendment.

Photo: Automobile traffic backs-up as it travels north from San Diego to Los Angeles along Interstate Highway 5 in California. REUTERS/Mike Blake

Democrats Face Risky Votes Ahead Of Memorial Day Recess

Democrats Face Risky Votes Ahead Of Memorial Day Recess

By Emma Dumain, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

WASHINGTON — House Democrats have some tough decisions to make before Congress breaks for a weeklong Memorial Day recess.

Walking a fine line between practicality and messaging, rank-and-file members are weighing their options for having the most impact on two legislative agenda items: a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund and the fiscal 2016 Legislative Branch appropriations bill.

Some lawmakers think if they withhold votes for either of these measures, they’ll be sending strong statements against proverbial can-kicking and sequester-level spending caps.

Those “no” votes, however, carry some political risk.

Voting against a bill that would keep countless transportation and infrastructure projects — and jobs — afloat past May 31 is hard to defend at first blush. Still, a growing number of Democrats and even some GOP moderates are arguing what’s more destructive is the succession of short-term patches preventing long-term certainty and sustainability.

Late last week, a bipartisan House coalition of mainly Democrats was looking for co-signers on a letter to Speaker John A. Boehner (R-OH), and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), pledging opposition to anything short of a multiyear highway bill. The measure due for consideration this week would extend the Highway Trust Fund, set to expire this month, through July 31.

Proponents say the extension buys Congress time to negotiate a six- or seven-year solution and reach consensus on the disagreements on offsets and costs. But Democrats counter they don’t have many options left to force leadership on both sides of the aisle to come to the table and hash out that elusive deal.

“What you’re seeing is people reaching a boiling point about the irresponsibility of not having a long-term transportation fund with a long-term funding source,” Representative Peter Welch (D-VT), said in the letter to Boehner and Pelosi. “This is protesting a failure to do our jobs.”

For Democrats worrying over the ramifications of voting against a short-term Highway Trust Fund extension, Welch said there was little to fear: If he and his allies were successful in sinking the patch, leaders would be compelled to act quickly to strike a compromise.

“Things can happen quickly around here when they have to,” he said.

Another co-signer, Representative John Carney (D-DE), admitted there were a number of colleagues who would have liked to join the effort but didn’t want to pretend a long-term agreement was tenable just days before the current Highway Trust Fund extension expires.

“Our tactic was mainly to send a message that people have this view,” Carney explained. “I think we’ve been successful, at least, in thinking about it and focusing on how do you actually force action or force folks to face up to the reality and in that sense we’ve had great dialogue.”

Welch and Carney might have backing from House Democratic leaders, though no decisions have been made.

“Republicans had ten months to come up with a long-term solution, and that’s what should be coming to the floor,” said an aide with Democratic leadership. “We will be talking to our members about the proposal Republicans introduced.”

Democrats face even longer odds on stopping the GOP’s Legislative Branch spending bill. The bill is usually the least controversial of all 12 appropriations, and rejecting it because of the topline number is a tough sell: At least with the other bills, like the fiscal 2016 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs measure, there were amendments Democrats didn’t like to justify their opposition.

A separate House Democratic leadership aide suggested Legislative Branch, which funds the operations of Congress, wouldn’t cause serious consternation.

As for a formal strategy to stonewall every appropriations bill until Republicans agree to a budget deal replacing sequestration, that same aide denied anything like that was in the works. He did, however, say there was an agreement to use the amendment process in committee markups and floor debates to put Republicans on the spot.

Forcing GOP appropriators during last week’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development markup to go on record opposing full funding for Amtrak after the deadly derailment in Philadelphia was one example of that tactic. Whatever amendment votes Democrats make Republicans take during the scheduled Wednesday markup of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill will also be key.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ongoing conversations about what kind of message it would send to have every Democrat be unified in opposition to spending bills, even one as parochial as Legislative Branch.

Late last week, Representative Steve Israel (D-NY), chairman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, invited appropriation subcommittee ranking members to the weekly meeting to discuss messaging strategy around appropriations bills.

“Look, I understand, and would expect, that some members of the committee struggle with voting against their own bills. I’m struggling myself with voting against those bills,” said Israel, who is also a member of the appropriations committee. “And the purpose of the meeting was to say whatever those concerns would be…let’s just have one message.”

Israel said that means voting against the bills — he would be voting against Legislative Branch, he said — or voting for them, but doing so in context: Explain the reasons behind the “yes” vote but don’t forget to argue against sequestration in the process.

“One of the things the DPCC is trying to do is have many messengers, but one message,” Israel said.

Photo: Elliott P. via Flickr

Highway Repair Funds Hit Congressional Roadblocks

Highway Repair Funds Hit Congressional Roadblocks

Washington (AFP) – Americans’ love affair with the automobile endures, but the account that helps maintain their roads is going broke, and Congress is embroiled in a partisan scrap over how to pay for much-needed repairs.

Across the United States more than 100,000 projects are underway to pave new roads, upgrade or rebuild ailing bridges, and generally modernize a ground transportation infrastructure that was once the envy of the world but has crumbled into mediocrity.

Some 6,000 projects could grind to a halt, putting 700,000 jobs at risk, according to transportation officials, if the nation’s Highway Trust Fund, which is projected to run dry by the end of August, is not replenished.

Doing so just months before a mid-term congressional election, with Republicans and Democrats taking very different approaches to spending and deficit reduction, will take substantial maneuvering in Congress.

The White House’s $300 billion, four-year transportation bill stalled in the Senate, leaving lawmakers scrambling to agree on a temporary fix.

The money squeeze has already impacted roadwork. An expansion from four to six lanes on a treacherous stretch of Kentucky highway, where 11 people died in a single disastrous accident in 2010, is three months late.

The $165-million project has been postponed until August by Kentucky’s governor, who is waiting to see whether Washington pays its share.

Federal and state governments spent some $156 billion to build, operate and maintain highways in 2013, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

About one quarter of that came from the federal government.

One reason for the highway fund’s depletion is that a tax on gasoline has not been adjusted for inflation since 1993, meaning the money gained from today’s tax is worth about one-third less.

According to the CBO, the result is an $8 billion shortfall for 2014, and a projected $164 billion loss over the next decade — a federal funding reduction of nearly 30 percent for states.

Senate Democrat Tom Carper supports gradually raising the federal gas tax from 18.4 cents to 30.3 cents per gallon. But for House Republicans ideologically opposed to tax hikes, the strategy is a non-starter.

“Here we go again,” rued Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, on a conference call Monday.

“We seem to be reverting once again to the Republican strategy of governing by crisis,” he added, citing last October’s 16-day government shutdown blamed on the intransigence of conservatives.

Democrats also have struggled to find the perfect formula. President Barack Obama is opposed to raising the gas tax, preferring instead to fill the gap by ending some corporate tax breaks.

The president last week stood before the Key Bridge in Washington, where two of the five spans that connect the capital to Virginia have been deemed “structurally deficient,” to tout his plan.

“We spend significantly less (on transportation infrastructure) as a portion of our economy than China does, than Germany does, than just about every other advanced country,” Obama said.

“Soon, states may have to choose which projects to continue and which ones to put the brakes on because they’re running out of money.”

Some Republicans have demanded that cuts be made elsewhere before signing off on transportation funding. Right-wing conservatives have even proposed ending the federal role in infrastructure funding altogether.

Temporary fixes have been introduced in both the Senate and House and are being debated this week.

The proposals, including a “patch” to fill the highway fund through December, are short-term remedies that have the attraction of postponing a potentially unpopular vote on transportation funding until after November’s congressional election.

But the 50 states are desperate to avoid lurching from one short-term funding patch to another.

“All states are in the same boat right now in terms of the difficulty in doing any long-range planning,” Chuck Wolfe, spokesman for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, told AFP.

AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards