Issue 1-09
TRANSPORTATION: Highway Bill Won't Hit House Floor until After July Recess -- Hoyer (06/03/2009)
The upcoming highway and transit reauthorization likely won't make it to the House floor until after the Fourth of July recess, and lawmakers may act before then to keep the federal highway account from running dry, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said.
Hoyer said that Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) would prefer to move the six-year spending bill faster, but that likely will not be an option.
"He'd like to move it ahead, obviously, sooner rather than later," Hoyer told reporters. "However, it is a very large bill."
The current authorization, which expires at the end of September, provided $286 billion for the nation's roads, rails and transit, and its next incarnation is expected to top $400 billion.
Oberstar and Transportation and Infrastructure ranking member John Mica (R-Fla.) had hoped to release a first draft of the bill this week and to bring it to the House floor this month, to give lawmakers ample time to pass it before the end of September. It is not clear if they still plan to release a draft by the end of the week.
Oberstar's "expectations are it won't be ready to do before after the July break," said Hoyer, who met with Oberstar this morning. "We'll have to see if it's ready to do by then. It's a big, complicated bill."
If the House does not take up the bill until next month, lawmakers, who will be on recess for all of August, will have to work quickly to pass it before the current bill expires at the end of September.
Adding additional pressure for quick action is news that the Highway Trust Fund is expected to run out of cash by August, leaving states without federal funds to complete transportation projects.
The White House is warning lawmakers that the fund will need an injection of $5 billion to $7 billion to keep the fund solvent through the end of the current fiscal year.
"We may well have to take action on the shortage," Hoyer said. "As you know, we've already done that once, we may have to do that again."
The fund would have run empty late last year if not for an 11th-hour transfer of $8 billion by Congress to keep it solvent. The plea for the cash came from then-Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who warned that the nation's road and rail work would likely come to a grinding halt if the fund were allowed to run dry.
Josh Voorhees, E&E reporter, Senior reporter Darren Samuelsohn contributed.
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