Freight interests giving Congress high marks for $305 billion FAST Act

The $305 billion, five-year highway spending bill passed in a rare bipartisan show of cooperation and signed by President Barack Obama on Dec. 3 is kind of like an old Clint Eastwood film. It contains the good, the bad and the ugly.
 
The good news is passing this FAST Act – “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation”—finally means an end to the 35 short-term, continuing resolution funding Band-Aids that Congress has passed since 2009. It finally gives states and localities some certainty in how much federal aid will be handed out in their infrastructure needs.
 
The bad is that it uses practically every possible budgetary gimmick in order to pay for it. Instead of merely raising the federal fuel tax – 18.4 cents a gallon on gasoline, 24.4 cents on diesel, unchanged since 1993 – it uses a variety of short-term, one-time only funding provisions. They include raiding the Federal Reserve’s rainy day fund, a reduction in the dividend formula that the Fed uses to reimburse banks’ interest, and plans to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, among other gimmicks. The latter seems rather odd considering the world is currently awash in crude oil, with prices hovering around $40 a barrel—down from $110 a barrel when some of the SPR oil was bought.
  
The ugly is these one-time only sources of funding almost nearly guarantees that Congress will have to revisit highway funding sometime in the future. But given Congress’s historic short-term, next-election-cycle myopic vision, perhaps that was to be expected. After all, no lawmaker had the stomach to raise fuel taxes 11 months before a presidential election.
 
The $61 billion-per-year is only a modest increase over current funding. The overall funding level is higher than MAP-21 (the last long-term highway funding bill passed in 2009).  But it is well short of the $100 billion a year for 10 years infrastructure program that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a Democratic presidential candidate, had been pushing in separate agendas.
 
The $305 billion bill breaks out this way—$207.4 billion for highways and bridges, $48.7 billion for mass transit, $8 billion for Amtrak and the rest an assortment of favors, chits and special interest payments based more on the strength of their lobbyists’ connections than anything else. The House passed it 359-65 and the Senate 83-16.
  
But given the pecuniary climate in Washington these days in funding any large infrastructure projects, freight interests generally gave Congress high marks for the FAST Act.
  
“You always want more money,” said Leslie Blakey, president of The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC), a 15-year-old trade group representing freight interests.  “But Congress has built in some smart things to try and address the funding gap.”
 
She mentioned project streamlining and trying to shorten the time that projects spend on the drawing board before the first shovel of dirt is turned. “I do think some of this is trying to be smarter about how we go about financing,” Blakey added.

Top business lobbyists lauded provisions meant to speed up the review and approval of permitting for significant infrastructure and manufacturing projects. That alone is expected to spur investment, development and overall growth of the economy.
 
The five-year deal took shape in the nick of time—in fact, on the same day the federal Highway Trust Fund was scheduled to run dry. After multiple months-long patches in recent years, this latest agreement will provide enough funds to keep the fund solvent for five years—something top business and transport lobbyists have been pushing for nearly a decade.
 
“This five-year reauthorization for our nation’s federal transportation infrastructure will enhance our global competitiveness and enable business to plan for the future, creating jobs and strengthening the economy,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue said. “This bill also gives Congress time to discuss longer-term solutions for providing consistent funding for the Highway Trust Fund without the looming threat of another short-term extension deadline.”
 
Trucking interests applauded the $305 billion bill. American Trucking Associations President and CEO Bill Graves called it “welcome news to those of us in the transportation world.”
 
“While we all, of course, wish there was more money to be had, this bill takes important steps to re-focus the program on important national projects and takes critical steps to improve trucking safety and efficiency,” Graves said.
 
Notably, ATA is pleased that the bill takes steps to reform the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s CSA (Compliance, Safety, Accountability) safety monitoring system. It opens the door for the use of hair testing for federally mandated drug tests. It also makes it easier for veterans returning from service to enter the trucking industry and sets aside dedicated funds for important highway freight projects.
  
“By ordering an evaluation and improvement of CSA, as well as removing the flawed scores the system produces from public view in the meantime, this bill is an important victory for data and accuracy in regulatory oversight,” ATA Executive Vice President and Chief of National Advocacy Dave Osiecki said.
 
Osiecki said by using hair follicle testing, trucking companies will have a “a powerful tool” to keep habitual drug users out from behind the wheel.
 
“These are both important victories for safety,” he added.
  
The ATA lost on its bid to allow 18-21-year-old drivers to operate trucks across state lines. But the new law allows DOT to establish a pilot program for current or former members of the military who are under 21 and with truck driving experience, to operate trucks across state lines.  They would not be allowed to operate hazmat or longer combination vehicles, however.
 
Participating drivers would be prohibited from transporting passengers or hazardous materials and “special configurations.”
  
Other pieces of the bill ATA was pleased to see enacted are a full study of the impacts of raising minimum insurance limits and a clamping down of a program to allow conversion of untolled Interstate highways to toll roads.
  
“It’s good news that Congress has created an opportunity for young veterans to transition to the trucking industry,” Graves said of the bill’s creation of a pilot program for certain veterans under the age of 21 to drive commercial across state lines. “We are, however, disappointed that qualified, young, non-military CDL holders cannot have the same opportunity because we believe it is illogical to allow these younger drivers to operate in intrastate commerce in each of the 48 contiguous states, but not let them cross state borders.”
 
The trucking lobby was disappointed the final bill does not address the potential patchwork of state rules unleashed by allowing California and other states to impose their own work and rest rules. Also, a fierce lobbying battle by ATA, UPS, FedEx and others to allow 33-foot twin-trailers (up from the currently legal 28-foot “pups”) was defeated by rail and safety interests, and that provision did not make the final cut.
 
“The FAST Act is one of the most important measures this Congress will pass,” said House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., who also served as chairman of the Conference Committee that crafted the final version.
  
“This is a common-sense, bipartisan bill that provides our state and local governments with the certainty they need to begin to plan for long-term projects that bring our aging system into the 21st century,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Ranking Member Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said.  “This legislation isn’t perfect.”
 
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., senior member of the Environment and Public Works committee, was one of those senators who agreed with that sentiment and voted against it.
 
“While the proposal includes some good transportation policies, the way the bill is paid for is simply irresponsible,” Carper said. “Rather than leading, Congress is passing the buck by using a grab bag of budget gimmicks and poaching revenues from unrelated programs for years to come in order to pay for today’s transportation needs.”

“This bill sets a terrible precedent,” Carper continued. “It sets bad transportation policy that undermines the user-pays principle, which has been the bedrock of investment in our nation’s highway and transit systems for more than half a century. And it sets bad fiscal policy that will actually increase our deficit in the long run.”
  
The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors applauded what it called “robust freight funding” in the five-year FAST Act. Specifically, it liked the freight-specific competitive grant program, the Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects Program, at $4.5 billion over five years, and a freight formula program, the National Highway Freight Program, at $6.3 billion over five years. The bill also sets much-needed federal multimodal freight policy.
  
“We are thrilled to see (Congress) recognizes so many of the Coalition’s long-standing priorities,” CAGTC President Blakey said. “Over the past 15 years, we have advocated for a minimum annual investment of $2 billion in the freight network.”
 
“Our coalition’s message has been heard by Congress loud and clear, and they acted on it almost in every aspect,” Blakey said. “They recognize freight as being one of those priorities.”
  
The FAST Act’s Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects Program is designed to distribute funds to projects that improve or enhance highway freight infrastructure through a competitive grant approach. The program provides up to $500 million in funding for projects that make improvements to freight movements on the highway, but that are located on other modes. A wide variety of state and local government entities are eligible to apply for funding through this program. The FAST Act also provides $6.3 billion, over five years, to a formula program. States are eligible to use funds to enhance freight mobility on the national highway freight network.
    
“The federal resources provided by the FAST Act will enable us to compete in an increasingly global economy, and I thank the Conferees for recognizing that freight infrastructure is an economic driver,” said CAGTC Chairman Sharon Neely.
 
Until now, freight projects, which are frequently large-in-scale and cross multiple jurisdictions, have had difficulty securing funds through traditional means. The funding provided by the FAST Act will go a long way towards aiding meritorious projects that, once completed, often have an “outsized effect on the local, regional, and national economy,” Neely added.
  
“Seeing a long-term highway bill passed was one of ATA’s top priorities,” said ATA Chairman Pat Thomas, senior vice president of state government affairs for UPS.  Thomas admitted the bill was “not perfect,” but called it a “tremendous step forward for trucking in many respects” and much better than the dozens of short-term extensions that Congress had relied on in the past decade.