DALLAS — The House and Senate tax-writing committees will take up the contentious debate on how to fund a multiyear surface transportation infrastructure bill this week with hearings Wednesday and Thursday on sustainable options for the federal Highway Trust Fund.
The House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will look at where to find the additional $90 billion needed to keep transportation funding at current levels for the next six years. They will need much more money if they want to boost infrastructure spending to the level requested by President Obama in his Grow America Act.
The House panel will convene Wednesday, followed by the Senate committee's Thursday morning session with witnesses from the Congressional Budget Office and the conservative Heritage Foundation. Former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will also testify.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the panel will examine revenue options for a multiyear reauthorization to put federal transportation funding on a sound fiscal footing at the hearing titled, Dead End, No Turn Around, Danger Ahead: Challenges to the Future of Highway Funding.
"While many in Congress agree we should aim for a long-term highway bill, the problem is often agreeing on how to pay for it," Hatch said.
Collections from the federal gasoline and diesel taxes, as well as other levies, dedicated to the HTF total about $40 billion a year, with expected expenditures of $53.7 billion from the fund in FY-2015.
Keeping the 2015 level of expenditures though FY-2021 plus inflation would require $85 billion to $90 billion of additional revenue for the HTF, according to the CBO.
Hatch has ruled out an increase in the gasoline tax, pushing instead for getting the needed revenue from comprehensive tax reform.
Congress has transferred some $65 billion to the HTF from the general fund since 2008 to make up the revenue shortfall. President Obama has proposed a $478 billion, six-year infrastructure program that would be funded with $240 billion of motor fuel tax revenues and $238 billion from a one-time, mandatory 14% tax on corporate overseas earnings.
A dozen Democratic senators on the finance committee sent a letter to Hatch in late April asking for hearings to "identify a clear path for a long-term, fully funded surface transportation bill at funding levels that would make a significant investment above baseline funding."
HWM Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he is looking forward to "exploring new ideas to close the shortfall once and for all" at the hearing on Wednesday morning.
A group of conservative House Democrats that call themselves the Blue Dog Coalition asked Ryan in early April to hold hearings soon on restoring the solvency of the HTF.
"There is considerable bipartisan enthusiasm for passing a multiyear transportation bill this Congress, but passing any legislation is dependent upon a long-term funding solution," the Blue Dogs said in a letter to Ryan. "Roads, bridges, and transit systems are in a state of disrepair across the country and the Highway Trust Fund can no longer sustain current needs."
A corporate tax reform bill (S. 981) sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would lower the corporate tax on repatriated foreign earnings with the resulting revenue dedicated to transportation.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said at a committee roundtable in Atlanta last week that the Paul-Boxer proposal might be the most viable solution to long-term transportation funding.
An extension of the HTF until the end of calendar 2015, expected to cost $8 billion, will be needed because it is unlikely Congress can agree on a long-term revenue source before the current two-month patch expires July 31, Shuster said.
