Senate Close to Passing Highway Bill

The Senate is close to passing a two-year, $109 billion highway bill that could become a model for what the House will do with its transportation legislation.

The bill, called Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), would streamline the federal transportation program, accelerate project delivery, eliminate earmarks, increase financing resources and fund improvements in freight distribution.

It would maintain overall funding at current levels by supplementing the dwindling Highway Trust Fund with tax changes and cuts in other programs. Fuel taxes, which supply the Trust Fund with most of its revenue, would not increase.

Truck safety provisions include a mandate for electronic onboard recorders, a clearinghouse for drug and alcohol test results and a written proficiency exam for new entrants into trucking. The bill also would provide funding for truck parking facilities.

Yesterday the Senate voted on a number of amendments, leaving several important provisions still on the table for action today.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and a principal author of the bill, said she expects the measure to pass.

One amendment that passed yesterday would remove private highways from consideration when Congress apportions federal highway money to the states.

Another would allow farm vehicle drivers to drive within 150 miles of the farm or ranch without a commercial license.

A third grants an exemption from the hours of service rules for drivers hauling agricultural goods within 100 air-miles of the farm during planting and harvest seasons. The exemption also would apply to carriage of farm supplies from or between retail or wholesale distribution points and the farm.

Another amendment that would have let states commercialize highway rest areas was defeated. Also defeated was an attempt to force President Obama to approve the Keystone Pipeline across the Canadian border.

Pending today is a decision on expanding the use of tolls on the Interstate System, a move strongly opposed by the trucking industry.

The House is not in session this week and it is not clear what it will do about reauthorizing the federal highway program.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week that the House would continue to discuss its 5-year, $260 billion measure while the Senate deliberated, but in the absence of agreement would bring up the Senate's bill, or something like it.

The highway program is authorized under a temporary extension until March 31. If Congress cannot pass a bill by then, it will have to cobble another extension of the program - the ninth since the program officially expired in October 2009.