Senate pushes long-term transportation bill as HTF deadline looms

With 10 days to go until funding for highway and transit programs runs out, a motion to proceed with debate was defeated as Democrats claimed they hadn’t been given enough time to read the details of the 1,030-page multi-year bill unveiled Tuesday morning.    With 10 days to go until funding for highway and transit programs runs out, Senate leaders on Tuesday presented a multi-year surface transportation bill to extend funding for highway and transit programs. But a motion to proceed with debate was defeated because Democrats claimed they hadn’t been given enough time to read the details of the 1,030-page document unveiled that morning as part of a deal between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Barbara Boxer, the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
   The McConnell-Boxer bill covers six years, but only provides three years of guaranteed funding for the Highway Trust Fund. With deficit neutrality a top budget priority, the money for the bill comes through a series of offsets that include a transfer of some customs and Transportation Security Administration passenger security fees, lowering interest rates paid by the Federal Reserve to banks, selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and measures to increase tax compliance.
   McConnell is giving more time for review now and hopes to keep the Senate in session through the weekend in order to get a vote and send the legislation over to the House with enough time to act before the Aug. 1 deadline.
   A week ago, the House passed a five-month extension on the premise that there isn’t enough time to debate a multi-year bill before the current two-month extension expires.
That bill would inject $8 billion from the Treasury into the insolvent Highway Trust Fund and make the move deficit-neutral by improving enforcement of tax laws and postponing spending of $3 billion in passenger security fees collected by the Transportation Security Administration.
   Surface transportation programs have been kept alive through a series of short-term extensions in recent years, the longest of which was the two-year MAP-21 bill that expired last September. Transportation advocates say lurching from one fiscal cliff to another makes it difficult for states to invest in complex, multi-year improvement projects for roads and bridges.
   There is significant agreement among lawmakers about programmatic reforms to improve project delivery and reduce waste. The challenge has been finding agreement on new, sustainable revenue sources to supplement the Highway Trust Fund, which currently relies on the motor fuels tax and, to a lesser extent, excise taxes on the trucking industry. There is strong opposition to raising taxes on consumers and to funding new infrastructure through borrowing, even though many policy experts say the gas tax is more appropriately called a user fee.
   The Highway Trust Fund has teetered on the brink of insolvency the past six years as inflation has eaten away at its receipts, which have also declined due to more fuel-efficient vehicles driven today. The gas tax is charged on a per-gallon basis and has not been increased since 1993. Congress has had to inject nearly $60 billion from the general tax base into the Highway Trust Fund to keep up with obligations to states.
   The Highway Trust Fund has a projected $90 billion shortfall over six years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
   The government only receives about $35 billion a year from taxes and user fees, but is spending more than $51 billion a year on surface transport programs, including federal highway aid to states.
   Questions remain, however, about whether House leaders, who say they prefer a long-term bill that is fully paid for, would go along with the Senate bill, according to political news outlet The Hill.
   The Senate bill includes a new program to fund freight transportation projects by carving out a small portion of the money for that purpose.
   McConnell has also said that any transportation bill would include an amendment to re-authorize the Export-Import Bank, which saw its charter lapse last month because of opposition from many Republican lawmakers, who view it as an example of corporate welfare.