DALLAS – The House could vote as early as Tuesday on a bill to reauthorize federal transportation funding for three weeks so lawmakers can resolve a $15 billion per year revenue shortfall that is blocking agreement on a multiyear highway measure.
The 22-day fix (H.R. 3819) would extend the Transportation Department’s authority to reimburse states for highway and transit projects until Nov. 20. Without the extension, that authority would expire on Oct. 29 under a 90-day short-term funding patch (P.L. 114-41) approved by Congress in late May.
The short-term bill, which was filed late Friday night, is sponsored by Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., the committee’s ranking Democrat, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee who is expected to succeed retiring Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in September that the Highway Trust Fund, buoyed with a transfer of $8.1 billion of general revenues by the May extension, would hit a $4 billion cash-balance threshold by Nov. 20 that would trigger a slowdown in highway project reimbursements.
President Obama would sign the short-term measure if it is quickly approved by the House and Senate as expected, White House spokesman Eric Shultz said Friday.
President Obama warned against another short-term extension when he signed the 90-day fix on July 31, but Shultz said the President recognizes the need for the proposed 22-day patch.
“I think the unfortunate reality is that due to congressional inaction, [Congress] will need to pass another short-term extension of these authorities to keep federal funding for America’s transportation systems,” Shultz said.
“As the President has said many times, that this country cannot continue to rely on short-term patches as an approach to funding our infrastructure’” he said. “So the House and Senate should use this time to finally complete its work on a long-term bill.”
The Transportation Committee approved the six-year, $325 billion Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 on Oct. 22.
The STRR Act (H.R. 3763) sets annual transportation funding at current levels plus inflation through fiscal 2021 but does not include a revenue provision to supplement the $40 billion per year of revenue from the federal gasoline tax and other levies dedicated to the HTF.
Shuster said last week that he would accept the $45 billion of revenue offsets in the Senate’s six-year, $360 billion DRIVE Act (H.R. 22) that provides full funding only for the first three years and then leave it up to the House Ways and Means Committee to find enough supplemental revenue for the final three years.
The transportation panel’s bill could be combined with a revenue title developed by the Ways and Means Committee and considered by the full House during the week of Nov. 2, Shuster said. The differences between a House transportation bill and Senate’s DRIVE Act would be resolved before the Nov. 20 deadline, he said.
Ryan and Shuster had favored using revenue from a revamp of corporate overseas taxes for transportation, but talks with Senate Democrats broke down over a push by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others for increased highway and transit funding.
The revenue offsets in the Senate bill include $9 billion from the sale of 101 million barrels of crude oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve between 2018 and 2025, and $16.3 billion from cutting the annual dividend paid by the Federal Reserve Bank to member banks to 1.5% from the current 6%.
