Second Stimulus Package to Include Transportation Funding

Senate Appropriations Committee members are expected Thursday to vote on transportation funding as part of a second economic stimulus package, Peter Rogoff, staff director of the committee's transportation panel told airport executives meeting here yesterday.

Highway provisions in the package - the supplemental appropriations bill for fiscal 2009 - may total more than $5 billion and as much as $8 billion or $9 billion of about $60 billion in the overall measure, according to a source familiar with the legislation who did not want to be identified.

Congressional staffers fielded questions about the stimulus provisions in the supplemental appropriations bill and other funding issues during the Airports Council International's summer legislative issues conference here.

The bill "will include transportation stimulus funding," Peter Rogoff, staff director for the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, told the airport executives at the conference.

Whether aviation funding will be part of the proposed appropriations is "to be determined," Rogoff said.

He explained that the bill is meant to "put people to work" and that it "remains to be seen" whether it will encompass airport-related employment.

Leadership in the House also has called for an economic stimulus package with infrastructure funding but has not come forward with specific proposals yet.

House Transportation and Infrastructure chairman James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., "wants to see aviation in a second stimulus package," said Christa Fornarotto, a staff member on the committee's aviation subcomittee who spoke at the conference.

Meanwhile, the congressional staffers indicated that lawmakers are unlikely to pass a long-term reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration, which has been funded for nearly a year on stopgap measures, before the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Instead, plans for a multi-year FAA bill are likely to be on hold until after the summer travel season, they said.

"I think everyone is moving towards coming back in September and looking at [a multi-year FAA reauthorization]," Fornarotto said.

But an overhaul of FAA funding may be seen as a more immediate priority heading into 2009. The current highway law - the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users - will expire at the end of fiscal 2009.

"They're probably going to be wanting to get the [FAA bill] out of the way so they can fight over the highway bill," Jarrod Thompson, a Republican staff member on the Senate Commerce Committee's aviation subcommittee, told those at the conference.

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