WASHINGTON — As both the House and Senate began debating highway reauthorization bills on Wednesday, the associated revenue measures came under attack.
House Democrats vehemently opposed the revenue measure for the $260 million, five-year bill sponsored by House Transportation Committee chairman John Mica, R-Fla. The bill would provide more than $40 billion through new and expanded leases on domestic drilling, shale oil, and natural gas production.
But Democrats said the revenues would not be sufficient to fund highway and transit programs over the five years. A Congressional Budget Office analysis projected the new and expanded leases would not produce any significant revenue in the next decade.
“We should scrap this bill and start over,” Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., told House colleagues.
Under increasing pressure from both sides of the aisle, the House Republican leadership announced earlier this week that it would bring Mica’s bill to the floor in individual pieces as passed by separate committees, in hopes each piece can get enough votes to pass. The transportation committee has jurisdiction over highways, transit, and aviation, the Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction over the leases, and the House Ways and Means Committee has jurisdiction over revenue.
In the Senate, meanwhile, the two-year bill sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., also took some lumps from Republicans critical of the funding timetable laid out in the revenue measure prepared by Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
That bill initially passed through committee with unanimous bipartisan support, but Republican enthusiasm began to erode in recent days because the bill raises revenue by eliminating Republican-backed fuel-tax exemptions and would require 10 years to raise sufficient revenue to pay for two years of highway and transit programs.
“We know that fiscally this just doesn’t work,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “Financially, it doesn’t work.”
That revenue measure contains many proposals to curb muni-related tax law restrictions during 2012. It would increase the limit for bank-qualified bonds, exempt private-activity bonds from the alternative minimum tax, allow sewer and water bonds to be issued outside of state volume caps, and authorize state infrastructure banks to issue tax-credit bonds for transportation.
Both chambers are expected to continue to debate the bills later this week, and the transportation policy portion of Mica’s bill could be voted on by the full House early next week. Democrats have already filed well over 200 amendments to that bill.
