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Highway Reform Face-Off on Capitol Hill

Proponents of a comprehensive six-year highway funding reform package said this week they're not giving up, but they face daunting odds, as the Senate works on a bill to extend the current highway program by 18 months.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday voted to extend the 2005 highway authorization (popularly as SAFETEA-LU) beyond its Sept. 30 expiration date to March 2011. The measure must clear other Senate committees, the full Senate and the House before becoming law. This approach is supported by the Obama administration.

"This administration in these hard economic times with so many people out of work can ill afford to tell people we're going to raise the gasoline tax," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said recently. "That's off the table for now."

But Congressman Jim Oberstar joined a prominent Republican Senator in a news conference Tuesday to voice support for a completely new authorization of surface transportation programs, voicing opposition to the extension plans.

Oberstar, D-Minn., who chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Senator George Voinovich of Ohio were also joined by House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Chairman Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore.

Under the leadership of Oberstar and DeFazio, the House T&I committee has passed a bill that proposes far-reaching changes in the structure and management of the highway program and would spend $450 billion over six years, a 38 percent increase over the current program. The bill would include a fuel tax increase.

"The Interstate Highway System gave America its greatest spurt of economic growth in the history of this country and we need to sustain that growth by sustaining the investment in surface transportation. And that is what this legislation will do," said Oberstar. "An 18-month extension will put us into a next presidential election cycle. It will take four years to finish, not a year and a half. I know how Congress works. Inertia becomes the enemy of progress. We are ready to move and we should move now."

Oberstar says the six-year bill is needed to give states and other recipients time to plan their long-term construction projects. Short-term extensions cause uncertainty and disrupt the planning process, resulting in fewer projects, fewer jobs and less economic growth.

However, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, also cited the uncertainty issue in her support of the 18-month extension. "(The) extension will send a message of certainty to all of our states and give us time to develop a transformational transportation bill with a stable, reliable funding source, a bill I have already named MAP-21, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century," she said.

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