The House Transportation and Infrastructure chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) said lawmakers are already making contingency plans for the likelihood that Congress won’t pass a new surface transportation authorization before the Highway Trust Fund runs short of money to pay all its bills his summer.
Congressman Shuster said he still hopes to report a bill out of his committee this spring but is not hopeful it will clear Congress this year. The Congressional Budget Office reported that the Highway Trust Fund will be unable to meet all is obligations before the fiscal year ends. The current surface transportation authorization (MAP-21) expires September 30, 2014. That means Congress will probably need to put together a short-term finance and policy package to carry the nation’s highway, bridge and transit programs into 2015 — or at least until after November’s mid-term elections.
In the Senate, meanwhile, Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) expects to begin marking up an authorization as early as next month, but the California Democrat said it wouldn’t include a financing title since that responsibility falls to the Finance Committee headed by new chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR). Meanwhile, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI), included $126.5 billion in new revenue for transportation projects in the tax restructuring package he recently proposed. On the other hand, the recent consensus on spending levels set in the House-Senate budget deal should allow for domestic spending bills, such as the Transportation-HUD appropriations bill, to pass Congress this year. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) warned however, the bill could be affected by uncertainties with the highway trust fund that funds some of the bill’s spending. Absent a new set of “pay-fors” to keep highway, bridge and transit spending at authorized levels, appropriators would need to figure out how, likely with DOT’s guidance, to divide up the money coming into the fund.