Congress sends 5-year $305b FAST Act to president

The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015, the first multi-year highway and infrastructure spending bill passed by Congress in over a decade, includes a provision for the reauthorization of the shuttered Export-Import Bank.    For the first time in a decade, Congress has passed a multi-year surface transportation bill enabling needed infrastructure investments in highways, bridges and rail-related projects that are critical to goods movement and motorists alike.
   On Thursday, the House and Senate both passed, by wide margins, the five-year Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, which for the first time includes a strong focus on multimodal freight policy and sets aside almost $11 billion exclusively for projects aimed at improving freight flows.
   President Obama is expected to sign the $305 billion legislation into law Friday, before the current two-week extension of federal highway spending expires at midnight. Attached to the bill is a reauthorization for the Export-Import Bank, which had to suspend issuing new loans and loan guarantees after spending hawks in Congress prevented renewal of its charter in July.
   FAST is the first long-term authorization since SAFETEA-LU, which expired in 2009. Transportation infrastructure and safety programs have since been funded through a series of short-term extensions and the two-year MAP-21 law in 2012. State transportation departments complained not knowing whether funding would continue made it difficult to plan large, long-term projects and forced them to scale back on many plans.
   States and industry groups welcomed the funding predictability and reforms to reduce tape for project approvals.
   “It is a tremendous relief to know that with the FAST Act, state departments of transportation will have some reasonable long-term certainty regarding the levels of federal investments for surface transportation,” Paul Trombino, president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and director of the Iowa DOT, said in a statement. 
   The transportation bill comes as a relief for the business community, which has long expressed concerns about bottlenecks and worsening road conditions that make it difficult to efficiently transport goods to domestic and international markets. The icing on the cake, from industry’s standpoint, is the new attention paid to the nation’s freight network.
   “We are more excited about this bill” than any over the past two decades, Leslie Blakey, president of the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors, said in a conference call with reporters.
   FAST authorizes the Department of Transportation to establish a new program to disburse $6.3 billion to states to be used on highways that carry a lot of freight, with the money distributed by the same formula as regular highway aid. A discretionary grant program will provide another $4.5 billion for nationally significant multimodal projects in which states, localities and the private sector are expected to partner to achieve.
   The legislation also creates an Innovative Finance Bureau in the Department of Transportation to act as a resource for project selection and help applicants with the process of applying for loans and grants.
   And it requires states to have freight plans in place to be eligible for the freight formula grants.
   “This bill is a big step forward and a desperately needed long-term investment in our nation’s infrastructure,” Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement. “For years, Congress has debated and delayed, and our nation’s transportation infrastructure has fallen behind for at least the previous decade. It’s been an inexcusable course of action and unacceptable to manufacturers and job creators.
   “Fortunately, Congress has rerouted and redirected its efforts. Finally, we can begin to get back on track and invest in infrastructure to ensure manufacturing competitiveness. Critical infrastructure funding to repair and modernize our bridges, roads and aging transit systems can now move forward.”
   Although industry was encouraged that a bitterly divided Congress finally addressed transportation investment on the eve of Friday’s funding expiration, there remains concern that nothing was done to address the systemic problem of how to pay for future investment and chop through the backlog of needed projects to repair old infrastructure and add new capacity in high-traffic areas.
   The Highway Trust Fund is falling about $16 billion a year short of present construction needs because the delta between inflation and reduced revenue due to more fuel-efficient cars is growing. The Highway Trust Fund is the repository for gas and diesel fuel taxes, which are paid for on a per gallon basis, but have not been raised since 1993. That means the government’s purchasing power has decreased almost 40 percent in the past 22 years.
   Since 2009, Congress has bailed out the Highway Trust Fund by borrowing and recently by diverting money from other programs. That trend continued in the FAST Act, with $70 billion of the total coming from sometimes controversial offsets in other parts of the budget, including some Customs fees.
   “Congress and the Obama Administration again sidestepped a golden opportunity to put the federal highway and transit investment program back on solid financial footing for the long-term. Five years goes by fast. In four years, state transportation departments will again be staring at a looming funding abyss,” Pete Ruane, president of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, said of the bill. “Congress and the Obama Administration also fell short in providing the level of investment that would result in demonstrable improvement in the overall physical conditions, performance and safety of the system. At best, we will be treading water.”
   Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del, a strong supporter of infrastructure investment, voted against the bill because of disagreements over how it was paid for.
   “I cannot support a piece of legislation that falls well short of the obligation Congress has to fix our broken Highway Trust Fund,” said Carper. “Sadly, Congress has opted to pilfer tomorrow’s dollars to pay for today’s need to rebuild and modern our country’s transportation system.
   “While this bill includes some good transportation policies, the way we pay for these policies is unsustainable and irresponsible, offering little more than a grab bag of budget gimmicks that will actually increase our deficit in the long run. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has already told us that when this bill expires, the Highway Trust Fund will be $100 billion in the hole.  
   “Since its inception, the Highway Trust Fund has supported construction and upkeep of America’s transportation system with user fees paid by those who use it,” he added. “I’m deeply disappointed that this bill diverges from that principle, which has worked so well for more than half a century. Instead Congress demands that just about everyone in our country pay more for our transportation system, except for the people who actually use our roads and highways.
   “This is absurd. It’s not unfair to ask those who actually use our nation’s transportation system to pay a little more for its upkeep and expansion. To be clear, pickpocketing revenues from unrelated programs for years to come in order to pay for today’s potholes and failing bridges is as cowardly as it is illogical.”