Separate House and Senate actions focus on surface transportation authorization

With roughly two weeks until the most recent short-term extension for the federal surface transportation authorization expires, things have been brewing in both the House and Senate, with an eye on both the short-term and the long-term prospects of keeping surface transportation authorization, specifically on the funding side, intact.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed the Highway Transportation and Funding Act of 2015 by a 312-119 margin yesterday. This legislation came out of the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this week and was proposed by the committee’s chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA).

As previously reported, if passed by both the House and Senate and then signed into law by the President, this bill would reauthorize surface transportation programs through December 18, 2015 and be paid with roughly $8 billion in common sense reforms, according to Ryan and Shuster.

As for specifically where this roughly $8 billion comes from, the House duo said about $5 billion comes from provisions improving tax compliance and preventing people from underpaying obligations by understating their tax liabilities, with another $3 billion from reduced spending.

A document from the House Ways and Means Committee outlined the offsets that would result in the roughly $8 billion needed to make this plan come to fruition. It includes:
-requiring lenders to report more information on outstanding mortgages, with an offset estimate of $1.086 billion;
-clarifying the statute of limitations on reassessing certain tax returns, with an offset estimate of $1.206 billion;
-requiring estates to report the value of property upon the owner’s death, with an offset estimate of $1.542 billion;
-adjust tax-filing deadlines for business, with an offset estimate of $314 million;
-allowing employers to transfer excess defined-benefit plan assets to retiree medical accounts and group life insurance, with an offset estimate of $172 million;
-equalizing taxes on natural-gas fuels, with a tax relief estimate of $90 million; and
-extending current budget treatment of TSA fees, with an offset estimate of $3.160 billion

On the Senate side, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee approved a multi-year transportation bill, entitled the Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015 by a 13-11 vote, which it said will “will advance in combination with S. 1647, the DRIVE Act, previously approved by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and component legislation from other Senate committees on the Senate floor to form legislation commonly referred to as ‘The Highway Bill’ or the ‘Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill.’”

Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said in a statement that the committee incorporated important bipartisan safety enhancements and approved a bill that enacts critical regulatory reforms.

“We worked hard to include input from both sides of the aisle, and we now have a bill that can move forward towards enacting a multi-year transportation reauthorization bill versus passing additional short-term extensions,” he said.

Some of the key components of this bill include: requiring the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to maintain updated records relating to regulatory guidance and provide for regular review to ensure consistency and enforceability; increasing the transparency of port operations by providing currently non-existent key metrics on port operations to help provide earlier warning of disruptions to various sectors of the economy following the recent nine month labor dispute at 29 West Coast container ports; developing a National Freight Strategy and Strategic Plan; authorizing a freight grant program; and project streamlining to provide additional authority to streamline delivery of infrastructure projects and consolidate burdensome permitting regulations, among others.

This bill was soundly endorsed by Elaine Nessle, executive director for the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors.

“The Comprehensive Transportation and Consumer Protection Act of 2015 is a significant step forward for multimodal freight planning and policy,” she said. “I commend Chairman Thune and the Committee members for developing policy that incorporates the many modes of transportation that move freight. The proposal contains several policy objectives held by the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors, including creation of a multimodal national freight policy and the call for designation of a multimodal national freight network to inform transportation planning and improve investment decision making.

While these political actions come as the clock continues to tick down towards the end of July, when the current short-term extension expires, time is of the essence, with a dire need to keep things moving along even if it is in the form of another short-term extension. The reason for that, according to many transportation infrastructure observers, is that it remains unlikely a long-term bill will be passed in the waning days of July.