Transportation infrastructure: Surface transportation funding gets another extension
Jeff Berman, Group News Editor -- Logistics Management, 11/2/2009
WASHINGTON-Late last week, the United States Congress signed off on a seven-week extension to continue funding for federal surface transportation until December 18.
This vote is part of a continuing resolution to continue funding for seven of 12 Fiscal 2010 spending bills which originally expired on September 30 and were extended in late September for four weeks with an October 31 expiration date.
While this continuing resolution ensures funding for surface transportation maintenance, development, and construction remains intact for roughly the next seven weeks, the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) reported that due to an $8.7 billion rescission of states' highway contract authority that took effect on September 30, this extension will be at a level that is $1.5 billion lower in contract authority than for the similar period last year.
This most recent continuing resolution represents the second extension for surface transportation funding since SAFETEA-LU-the current $286 billion, five-year spending program-Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users- expired at the end of September. And it also signals that a more long-term fix is not likely to come in the short-term, due to Congress's ongoing focus over the health care reform debate.
Earlier this year, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James L. Oberstar drafted six-year, $500 billion bill introduced as a successor to SAFETEA-LU. Oberstar's plan-with a vision for a National Transportation Strategic Plan that is international in nature and national in scope-is at a standstill due to lack of sufficient funding mechanisms.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Spokesman Jim Berard told LM that between now and the second continuing resolution deadline of December 18, a few different things may happen. One may be moving to a long-term bill and another may be coming to an agreement on another extension on an indeterminate amount of time.
"Chairman Oberstar would like to see the long-term bill move and be on the House floor by Christmas, but we are still in a holding pattern to due health care," said Berard. "And the Ways and Means Committee on the House side has to mark up the revenue title of the [Oberstar] bill before we can even bring it to the House floor."
AASHTO also recently reported that members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee are pushing for a six month extension that would not require any additional revenue transfers to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF).
AASHTO added that this bill would serve as a replacement for H.R. 3617, The Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2009, which the House submitted in September. H.R. 3617 would serve as an "extension of Federal-aid highway, highway safety, motor carrier safety, transit, and other programs funded out of the Highway Trust Fund pending enactment of a multiyear law reauthorizing such programs," according to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee officials. This bill never made it to the Senate floor.
An industry source told LM that the Senate and House versions will now have to be resolved in a conference committee, and noted it is hard to speculate which version will win out.
The HTF shortfall is primarily due to declining vehicle miles traveled and a federal motor fuel tax that has not been raised from its current levels of 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel since 1993. The HTF is the federal government's primary source for financing highway, bridge, and transit projects.
The Obama Administration has repeatedly stated raising the gas tax is currently not an option. The current user fees generate only enough revenue to finance $35.1 billion of investments from this year's $53.1 billion funding level.
A trucking industry executive noted that while Oberstar's bill is forward-thinking, it also comes with a huge price tag, with no appetite or reasonable positions put forward to fund it.
"I am happy everybody is keeping the pressure on to get this done, because if we take the focus off it-or if there is a lull-we could be looking at delays of several years of continuing to just do these extensions," said Randy Mullett, vice president of government relations for Con-way. "The extensions are fine in that they do not decrease any funding other than what drops off through inflation, but at the same time they don't do anything to advance any new programs."
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