DALLAS -- The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee next week will vote on a multiyear surface transportation funding bill that includes policy provisions and annual allocations, but no additional revenues for the chronically insolvent Highway Trust Fund.
Committee chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said Wednesday that the committee will meet Oct. 22, just a week before the Oct. 29 expiration of the current 90-day HTF extension, for a vote on a multiyear measure that will not resolve a $15 billion per year shortfall in revenues.
“The committee will move forward with the policy and authorization provisions of a bill to improve America’s surface transportation infrastructure, reform programs, refocus those programs on national priorities, provide more flexibility and certainty for state and local partners, and welcome innovation,” Shuster said.
Details of the proposal will be posted Thursday on the committee’s website, according to a Shuster spokesman.
Shuster said last month that the House bill will be similar but not identical to the DRIVE Act that the Senate passed in late July a few hours before adopting the 90-day extension that he co-sponsored with Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
“Hopefully we've got some better stuff in there,” he said in early September.
Shuster had planned to vote on the transportation bill last month but postponed it while negotiations were under way between House Republicans and Senate Democrats on a proposal to obtain the needed revenues from a revision of tax code provisions for U. S. companies with overseas earnings.
The talks between Ryan and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., broke down last week over the Democrat’s insistence on significant funding increases from the current levels.
The Senate’s six-year bill would provide $273.4 billion for highways and $59.3 billion for transit but is fully funded for only for the first three years with $45.6 billion of general revenue offsets.
Collections from the federal gasoline and diesel fuel taxes and other sources are approximately $40 billion per year, while expenditures from the HTF are about $54 billion per year. Ryan and other Republican leaders in the House have ruled out an increase in the fuel taxes to cover the revenue gap.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel’s ranking Democratic member, have urged the House to endorse the Senate bill.
But Shuster said last month the House may opt for a shorter funding measure due to the lack of full funding in the DRIVE Act.
Boxer sent a letter on Wednesday to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., offering her help in passing a long-term transportation bill before the Oct. 29 deadline.
“This crisis requires all of us to join hands across the aisle to ensure we pass a multiyear surface transportation bill and do it in a way that is funded,” Boxer said. “We must pass a multiyear transportation bill without delay.”
If Congress is forced to pass another short-term extension, it would not require a transfer from the general fund to keep the HTF functional. The $8.1 billion of general revenues transferred to the HTF in late July by the 90-day measure (P.L. 114-41) had been expected to keep the fund solvent through at least Dec. 18.
However, Transportation Department said in September that the highway fund would hit a critical low-cash balance threshold by Thanksgiving, which would trigger a slowdown in reimbursements to states for ongoing projects.
