The American Trucking Associations said in a BlastFax to members yesterday that the U.S. Senate has passed a $295 billion highway bill, by a vote of 89 to 11
, despite a threat from the White House that the President will veto a bill that exceeds the House legislation's $284 billion level. A final spending bill has been delayed for the past two years; highway funding has continued through six temporary authorization measures.
According to the ATA, the House and Senate intend to move quickly to a conference committee to resolve their bills' differences and send the legislation to the President before the current highway bill's extension expires on May 31. However, many observers believe that bill passage in such a short time-frame is unrealistic and that another extension, which could extend debate to late July, might be necessary.
The ATA claimed to have won several major victories on the Senate floor, including passage of an amendment which limits tolls on existing Interstate highways to one project in Virginia. This provision was included at the insistence of Senator John Warner (R-VA) and is consistent with House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Don Young’s (R-AK) commitment to the Virginia I-81 project. An amendment to impose additional federal restrictions on states' authority to increase truck size and weight limits was filed but not offered. At ATA's request, the Senate created a new $20 million grant program for training entry-level truck drivers. Several trucking issues were not debated and are not in the Senate bill, including the mandatory fuel surcharge championed by the Owner Operator Independent Driver Assn., and codification of current hours-of-service regulations, which had been requested by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to bypass federal court borders to rewrite the new rules.