DALLAS -- Lawmakers have until Dec. 4 to complete work on a compromise multiyear highway bill with President Obama's signing of a two-week extension of federal highway funding on Friday.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the conference committee working out differences between House and Senate versions, pledged last week that a reconciled, long-term highway bill would be ready for consideration when Congress returns Nov. 30 from this week's Thanksgiving recess.
"This is the last extension," Shuster said at the conference committee's public session on Nov. 18. "Let me put an exclamation point on that."
The extension was adopted by voice votes in the House on Nov. 16 and in the Senate on Nov. 19.
Shuster's proposed schedule would give the House and Senate enough time to debate the conference committee's proposal and agree on a long-term funding bill before the end of the current extension. The 14-day measure (H.R. 3996) is the 36th short-term (2 years or less) reauthorization of federal transportation funding since 2005.
House rules give members 48 hours to consider legislation before voting on it.
"Procedurally, this barely gives us – the House – enough time to pass the conference report and get it to the president by Dec. 4," he said.
The House bill, which is an amended version of the Senate's DRIVE Act (H.R. 22) would provide $261 billion of federal highway funding and $55 billion for public transit. The Senate version includes $273.4 billion for highways and $59.3 billion for transit.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, had predicted a major announcement on Friday expected to be about an agreement on the length and annual funding levels of a compromise measure, but it did not occur.
Shuster said he wants to keep the final version of the measure at six years, but other lawmakers are pushing for a five-year bill with the same funding in the Senate's six-year bill.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), said she supports more funding than would be provided by the House proposal.
"The nation needs $400 billion over the next six years to maintain our infrastructure's status quo. The House bill authorizes $325 billion," she said. "By making this a five-year, not a six-year, bill, we could at least make up for the status quo shortfall."
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, said last week that most of the contentious points of the highway funding proposals have been smoothed over in the conference committee.
"I think for the most part we're kind of all in the same place on our side, that we like the five years at DRIVE Act levels," Thune said.
The compromise bill will likely span five years and provide $7.5 billion more to states for highways and transit than in the House-approved measure, said Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation.
"That's what we're hearing right now," he said Monday. "They're looking at about $68 billion in bailouts, which would provide annual funding levels at about the proposed Senate level."
The $68 billion of revenue offsets would be needed to supplement the federal gasoline tax and other levies dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund over five years. Expenditures from the HTF in fiscal 2015 totaled $53.7 billion with dedicated revenues of only $39.6 billion.
Davis predicted Congress will need another funding extension of about a week to wrap up a multiyear highway bill.
"The idea is to have the House or Senate pass the conference committee's report by Dec. 4 because once you've done that, it's locked into stone," he said. "The other chamber can't change anything in an adopted conference report at that point without re-starting the whole, lengthy legislative process."
There is little chance of a completed, multiyear highway bill making it to the President next week before current extension expires, Davis said.
"That would not be enough time to put pass the bill and have a nice signing ceremony," he said. "Everybody – the President, Congress, transportation groups – loves a nice signing ceremony."
