DALLAS -- Another short-term extension of federal transportation funding is being developed that would keep the reimbursements flowing to states for highway and transit projects past the end of the week as the latest short-term fix expires on Oct. 29.
The extension, which could be announced as early as Friday night, is expected to last at least until Thanksgiving to give lawmakers time to reconcile a six-year, $325 billion measure adopted Thursday by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with a six-year, $360 billion bill passed by the Senate in late July.
House transportation committee staffers began working on a measure to reauthorize the Transportation Department’s authority to reimburse states for projects as soon as the six-year proposal was advanced Thursday afternoon on a voice vote, said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation.
“Negotiations with the Senate side got under way this morning and they hope to announce something tonight or over the weekend,” Davis said Friday. “There is no way that the House would be able to pass this bill, which does not have a revenue provisions at this moment, and reconcile it with the Senate bill by Thursday.”
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House T&I Committee and sponsor of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (H.R. 3763), said House leaders and members of the Ways and Means Committee are looking for ways to resolve the $15 billion per year gap between revenues dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund and expenditures from it.
The shortfall likely will be covered in the first three years by revenue offsets similar to those in the Senate bill (H.R. 22), Shuster told reporters on Thursday.
“I believe [the Ways and Means Committee] are working on that and working with leadership so that we get something and get it married up on the floor,” he said. "A lot of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle had good faith that they voted for this today knowing that we don’t have the revenue there.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said resolving the differences between the Senate bill that he sponsored and the House committee’s proposal should be quick work.
“Both the Senate and the House bills have many similarities that will allow for a very short conference period,” Inhofe said. “Congress should be able to send a bill to the president’s desk by Thanksgiving.”
The short-term fix, which would be the 35th extension since 2009, will not require a transfer into the HTF from general revenues because the $8 billion moved in late July by the current extension should be sufficient to meet obligations through the end of 2015, Davis said.
“The Senate wants it to be no later than Nov. 20,” he said.
The Transportation Department said earlier this month that the HTF would hit a critical cash-balance threshold of $4 billion by Nov. 20 that would trigger a slowdown in state reimbursements. However, Davis said an unexpected collections bump from an HTF-dedicated tax on commercial trucks should keep the HTF afloat longer.
“There will be no need to slow reimbursements in calendar 2015,” Davis said.
Davis said he expects Congress to agree on a multiyear transportation bill before the next proposed extension runs out.
“I think we will see something by Christmas, but probably not by Thanksgiving,” he said.
