DALLAS -- Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on Tuesday he is looking for $11 billion of revenues to offset general fund transfers needed to extend the Highway Trust Fund through the end of calendar 2015.
Hatch told reporters after a closed-door meeting of finance committee members that cash balances in the HTF can support current funding through July. By then, he said, Congress should be able to reach agreement on an extension of five months or longer.
The reprieve until the end of 2015 would give the finance committee the time it needs to find a way to support long-term federal highway and transit funding without requiring new revenue from increases in federal gasoline and diesel taxes or repatriation of corporate offshore earnings, Hatch said.
"I need some time because I need to do a long-term highway bill," he said. "I think we're going to need to carry it over to the end of the year."
Hatch said he intends to work on a fully funded, six-year transportation bill for passage this fall.
"We're probably going to have to do a short-term patch, so we have the time to be able to do the extension," he said.
It will take a general fund transfer of about $11 billion to keep the HTF solvent and federal reimbursements to states for highway and transit flowing through the end of 2015, Hatch said. Lawmakers must offset money transferred from the general fund to the HTF.
"I think I can raise that," he said. "We are working on it as we speak."
The current short-term extension that will expire May 31 required a $10.8 billion transfer to the HTF from the general fund in 2014. Congress has shifted more than $63 billion into the HTF since 2008.
The short-term patch signed into law by President Obama in early August 2014 required a $9.8 billion general fund transfer. The move was offset with $3.5 billion generated by extending for one year some custom fees that were to expire in 2023, and more than $6.3 billion from corporate pension smoothing, which increases employers' taxable income.
The regular transfers are necessary because collection from the federal gasoline and diesel taxes are $13 billion to $16 billion less than yearly expenditures from the fund.
The current extension also involved a transfer of $1 billion from the dormant Leaking Underground Storage Trust Fund, which receives a 0.1 cent share from the federal taxes of 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents for diesel.
Congress has transferred $3.4 billion from LUST to the HTF since 2008 but the tank fund has been almost depleted. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is responsible for the fuel tank repair program, said the current balance is less than $450 million.
Hatch said he had hoped to send a short-term extension measure to the Senate floor this month but now expects it will be in June.
"I doubt that that's going to happen," he said of passing an extension before May 31. "It will carry over just fine until about July."
Earlier in the day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said another short-term HTF fix before the end of the month is one of the Senate's top priorities.
Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., a member of the finance committee who last year proposed a 12 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax, said he does not support Hatch's proposed extension. Republicans in the Senate likely will go along with a short-term extension in the hope it leads to a multiyear measure, said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
