DALLAS -- Another short-term extension of federal transportation funding may be needed this fall while the House and Senate work out their differences over a multiyear highway bill, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Wednesday.
The committee may unveil a long-term surface transportation bill next week, though it's unlikely there's enough time to pass the measure and resolve differences with the Senate's DRIVE Act before the current 90-day extension of transportation funding expires Oct. 29, Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., said. A committee vote on a multiyear highway bill could take place next week.
"That's what we've been looking at, but we're still working out some details," Shuster said.
The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also has to deal with the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, which expires at the end of fiscal 2015 on Sept. 30, he said.
"We're going to have to do a short-term extension on the FAA and probably highways," Shuster said.
The next extension would be the 35th quick fix since Congress passed its last multiyear highway bill in 2005. The current transportation funding law, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21, which was approved in 2012 and set to expire in July 2014, has been reauthorized three times since then.
The Transportation Department's authority to reimburse states for highway and transit projects from the Highway Trust Fund will expire in late October. The HTF is expected to stay solvent through June with the $8.1 billion of general revenues transferred into it as part of the 90-day extension approved in late July.
The House transportation bill will be similar to the six-year, $350 billion DRIVE Act passed by the Senate on July 30 but "with some better stuff in there," Shuster said.
The Transportation Committee's bill won't include revenue provisions to fund the transportation expenditures in the measure, he said.
"That's coming out of Ways and Means [Committee]," Shuster said. "They're working on it."
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the committee, said in July that he wants to fund transportation from a levy on overseas corporate earnings as part of a comprehensive revamp of the international tax code.
The DRIVE Act provides $274 billion for highways and $75 billion for transit over six years. It is fully funded only for the first three years with $47 billion of revenue offsets in addition to $40 billion per year in federal gasoline and diesel taxes.
An advocacy group opposed to new tolls on existing interstates is rallying members to fight an attempt in the House to loosen restrictions on a pilot toll program now limited to a few designated states.
"ATFI has learned that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is considering expanding interstate tolling in its upcoming highway reauthorization bill," the group said in a letter.
Tolls on existing interstate lanes would have serious negative consequences, ATFI said.
"Businesses would face higher operating expenses and, where possible, seek to pass on those costs on to consumers," it said. "Commuters and travelers would face steep cost increases, and hourly employees might have to work an extra hour per day just to pay the toll to and from work." The DRIVE Act would loosen some restrictions in the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program, which was first approved by Congress in 1998 but never put into practice. The Senate's measure would allow participating states to use the revenues from tolled interstate lanes for overall highway system improvements.
"We fear that making the revenues available for projects on the non-tolled segments would turn interstate highway into cash cows for the states," said Stephanie Kane, a spokeswoman for the anti-toll group. "The pilot program should be eliminated, not expanded."
