HOUSE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE LEADERS APPEAL FOR HIGHWAY FUNDING

HOUSE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE LEADERS APPEAL FOR HIGHWAY FUNDING    Leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee have sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders asking them to not rescind $320 million in highway program contract authority.
   Representatives Don Young, R-Alaska, and James Oberstar, D-Minn., the chairman and ranking Democratic members of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, respectively, wrote their concerns to leaders of the Appropriations Committee as the House and Senate begin conferences on a Supplemental bill (H.R. 4775) that would allow for funding through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21).
   “It is unprecedented for highway contract authority that has already been apportioned to individual states to be rescinded,” Young and Oberstar wrote. “This provision penalizes all states in order to pay for projects in a few states.”
   One of the items Young and Oberstar object to is the bill’s provision of $5 million in funding for a “coastal guardian” program. Oberstar and Young wrote that the committee believes such a program should fall under the auspices of the Maritime Transportation Antiterrorism Act of 2002, and not this bill. “We urge that this provision be deleted in conference,” they wrote.
   The bill falls under the reauthorization of TEA-21, which provides for $218 billion to be authorized from 1998-2003. TEA-21 builds on previous legislation, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), a law signed by President Clinton to authorize highway, transit and other surface transportation programs for the next six years.