DALLAS - Action on a controversial appropriations bill that would essentially freeze next year's federal transportation funding while slashing popular competitive grant programs now shifts to the Senate following its narrow passage by the House late Tuesday night.
The House passed the fiscal 2016 appropriations measure, H.R. 2577, by a thin margin of votes, 216-210, with 31 Republicans joining all but three Democrats in opposing it.
The transportation plan would allocate $40.25 billion to highways and $10.7 billion to transit in FY-2016 -- some $116 million less than in FY-2015 and almost $20 billion less than President Obama requested.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has not yet received the House bill and has not scheduled hearings on it, a committee spokeswoman said.
The appropriations funding is too little for the Obama administration, which has vowed to veto the bill if it gets through the Senate without additional dollars for highways and transit. It is too much for the conservative Heritage Foundation, which contends that Highway Trust Fund revenues would be billions of dollars less than expenditures. The bill includes appropriations for the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as the Transportation Department.
The House rejected an amendment for a 1% across-the-board spending cut. It also opposed two amendments proposed by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., one that would ban on the use of special facility bonds to finance a rail project in Florida and another that would prevent the U.S. Transportation Department from funding any rail projects that couldn't reach a speed of 150 miles per hour. But it adopted a proposal by House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that would block federal funding for California's bullet train project.
Rep. David Price, D-N.C., the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, urged a no vote on the bill because of deep cuts to transportation grant programs and restrictions on travel to Cuba.
"This bill doesn't just provide insufficient funding for critical investments, it also includes toxic provisions completely unrelated to the appropriations process," Price said.
The bill would reduce the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery competitive grant program to $100 million in FY-2016, down from $500 million in FY-2015 and the lowest level since the six-year-old program began, he said.
While the bill would provide federal transportation funding in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, reimbursements to states for highway and transit projects is assured only through Aug. 1. That's the expiration date on the two-month extension of the Transportation Department's spending authority and the remaining cash balances in the Highway Trust Fund.
Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said at a committee roundtable in Atlanta on Tuesday that the revenue from the corporate tax repatriation proposal of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., might be the solution to long-term transportation funding.
"There are a number of options out there," Shuster said. "Most viable is probably the idea of repatriation but I like any idea that will fund the transportation system that is passable, that's possible."
The Boxer-Paul bill -- S.981, the Invest in Transportation Act -- would allow companies to bring in offshore earnings at a one-time 6.5% tax rate rather than the current 35% if they pledge to invest the funds in transportation infrastructure.
Another short-term patch, probably until the end of the year, will be needed this summer to prevent transportation projects across the country from grinding to a halt if Congress fails to extend the spending authority and replenish the HTF, he said.
"We'll have to do one at the end of July," Shuster said. "We want to get through the construction season. My goal with the last extension was to get us through the construction season."
