That New Transportation Bill? Let’s Wait, Says LaHood

Maybe next year, transpo fans. Or, more accurately, maybe in 2011.

A few months ago, it seemed like we would get a new transportation bill–those behemoth and defining pieces of legislation that come up every half decade or so  in Congress–by the fall. In fact, the king of all things transportative on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jim Oberstar, promised one would be on the president’s desk by September 30, the day the old act expires.

The proposed agenda for this bill has been broad and ambitious: put transit investment on more equal footing with highways, create a more integrated and sensible structure for the DOT, start making up for decades of underinvestment in infrastructure, and move toward greener and more rational decision making for all projects.

But then public voices began to chime in and say that getting it done this year might not be realistic. Still Oberstar pressed on for getting it done in ‘09. But privately, and then to some extent publicly, members of Congress and staffers began to acknowledge that doing it this year would be a problem. The biggest issue: How to pay for it. The sums being discussed have been in the $450 - 500 billion range, and there’s already been a good bit of spending done this year.

Plus there’s the fact the Highway Trust Fund, the piggy bank that your gasoline taxes get fed into, is about to go bust. So the administration–which has shown very good leadership on transportation issues for the most part–seems to have calculated that the best strategy was to punt until 2011. Why not just do it next year? Well, the run-up to Congressional elections is not a great time to be trying to pass a half trillion dollar bill that lots of challengers and incumbents will want to demagogue (by Twitter, no doubt) as the mother of all pork sandwiches.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood dropped the bomb this afternoon with the following statement:

“This morning, I went to Capitol Hill to brief members of Congress on the situation with the Highway Trust Fund.  I am proposing an immediate 18-month highway reauthorization that will replenish the Highway Trust Fund. If this step is not taken the trust fund will run out of money as soon as late August and states will be in danger of losing the vital transportation funding they need and expect.

“As part of this, I am proposing that we enact critical reforms to help us make better investment decisions with cost-benefit analysis, focus on more investments in metropolitan areas and promote the concept of livability to more closely link home and work. The Administration opposes a gas tax increase during this challenging, recessionary period…

“I recognize that there will be concerns raised about this approach.  However, with the reality of our fiscal environment and the critical demand to address our infrastructure investments in a smarter, more focused approach, we should not rush legislation.”

The reforms he mentions are things he has already been advancing, and presumably if they can take solid form in this interim reauthorization then the battle lines will have advanced meaningfully for the next bill.

Oberstar is vowing that he’ll push ahead with his plan to get the bill passed this year. But he’s a Democrat, and our bet would be that the administration will ultimately determine the timetable.

One thing we’ve been wondering about: in this little-noted Journal of Commerce story from last week, Oberstar said that he wanted the Treasury to reimburse the Highway Trust Fund $20 billion to repay a transfer that went the other back in the 90s. Was that a last ditch strategy to keep the highway fund solvent (though Oberstar’s press secretary also claimed it wouldn’t go bust before December) and get a new bill passed this year? Well, if so, it didn’t work.