Not Much Chance of a Highway Bill This Year

There is practically no chance that Congress will pass a highway bill this year - the will to raise the money is simply not there, said congressional leaders and staffers.

"If any of you think that there will be a positive vote on increasing the gas tax between now and November 2, raise your hand because I want to see who's been smoking dope," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, at a gathering of freight transportation experts yesterday.

Mica, who supports the reauthorization proposal that the T&I Committee reported out last year, does believe there is a chance to get a bill passed in the first half of next year, but it would have to be funded by something other than a fuel tax increase.

He suggested to the members of the Coalition for America's Gateways & Trade Corridors that the fuel tax mechanism be abolished and replaced with a national sales tax, supplemented by a National Infrastructure Bank.

On that point he directed his commentary to Transportation Under Secretary Ray Kienitz, who was in the room. The Obama administration's plan to create a $25 billion infrastructure bank is "peanut brain thinking," he said. "We need a $250 billion infrastructure bank."

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee, added a caveat to the infrastructure bank idea. It's a great idea for sewer projects or toll roads because they can generate funds to pay back the borrowed money, but neither transit nor highway resurfacing projects will benefit because neither makes money, he said.

DeFazio agreed with Mica that a fuel tax increase is not going to get through Congress. His approach is to index the fuel tax to the cost of highway construction inflation, and supplement that with a tax on each barrel of oil - a move that the petroleum industry would surely fight.

The Obama administration remains on the sidelines with respect to the funding issue - it opposes any increase in the fuel tax this year and has not come forth with a substantive alternative. And it has not yet come forth with an actual proposal on transportation policy.

"It's hard to get a bill of this magnitude through Congress when the administration affirmatively does not want the bill," said Jeff Davis, editor and publisher of Transportation Weekly. The Obama administration has offered a set of principles but has not yet introduced legislative language.

The vacuum on funding is impeding work on a bill in the Senate, said Tom Lynch of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

"Writing a bill when you don't know your dollar amount because you can't know your funding source gets to be a difficult thing," he said.

The Finance Committee, the panel that controls funding on the Senate side, does not support a fuel tax hike, he said. That means that it will be hard for his committee to finish work on its policy bill, even though the Committee chair, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has said she intends to mark up legislation this year.

The good news, Lynch said, is that there will be a freight title in the Senate bill.