DALLAS — The $46.3 billion of offsets in the Senate's multiyear transportation bill would fall $1 billion short of compensating for the proposed transfer of general revenues to the Highway Trust Fund, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The bill's provisions would offset the transfer $46 billion from the general fund to the HTF over the next three years while reducing deficits by $45 billion over 10 years, CBO director Keith Hall said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and several Senate committee chairs and ranking minority members.
Another $300 million would be transferred from a trust fund dedicated to a discontinued effort to repair leaking underground petroleum storage tanks.
The current two-month extension of the HTF will expire Friday unless Congress adopts the Senate's six-year bill or the House's short-term patch, which would require an $8.1 billion transfer from the general fund.
The House, which earlier this month adopted its bill extending the HTF through Dec. 18, is scheduled to adjourn Thursday for a month-long August recess. The Senate will remain in session into next week.
House leaders, including Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have urged the Senate to pass the short-term fix before Friday's deadline to avoid a likely cutoff of federal transportation funding in August.
The Senate bill is based on the DRIVE Act, S. 1647, which the Environment and Public Works Committee adopted June 24. The Senate is expected to consider a number of amendments to the bill before a vote on Wednesday or Thursday.
The revised DRIVE Act would provide $36 billion more of transportation funding over six years than projected by CBO earlier based on fiscal 2015 expenditures with annual increases for inflation, Hall said.
The Senate proposal would provide a total of $350 billion of contract authority from the remainder of fiscal 2015 through fiscal 2021, CBO said.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate EPW Committee, used the weekend's Republican radio message to build support for the six-year proposal.
The 33 short-term extensions since 2008 have crippled the states' ability to plan ahead for large infrastructure programs, he said.
"This has resulted in highway dollars being spent only on maintenance and basic tasks like filling potholes," Inhofe said. "We have slowed building projects and stopped modernizing."
The Senate bill would fully fund the first three years of the six-year proposal with three years of general revenue transfers totaling $45 billion to bolster the HTF's gasoline tax and other revenue collections. The general transfers would include $8 billion to keep the HTF solvent through the end of fiscal 2015 on Sept. 30.
Fully funding the remaining three years would require an additional $51 billion of general revenue transfers to maintain the bill's funding levels, the CBO said in its analysis.
Several proposed revenue offsets were removed from the bill late last week, which caused some expenditures to be trimmed in the latest version.
The popular Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act low-interest loan program would be reduced to $300 million per year, down from $650 million per year in the original bill and less than half of the $1 billion allocated in fiscal 2015. The House-approved transportation appropriations bill for fiscal 2016, which would cut the program to $100 million per year.
The Senate voted Sunday to limit debate on an amendment proposed by McConnell that would renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank. House leaders do want to renew it. McConnell said he opposes the revival of the export financing agency, which expired at the end of June, but wants to give senators the opportunity to vote on it.
