Transportation Bill Is Dead As A Doornail For 2009 Because Nobody Can Figure Out How To Pay For It

Over the past week or so, there has been a pretend drama in Washington about whether we’ll be getting a giant new transportation bill in 2009. The prospect is exiciting, of course, because in addition to $500 billion in loot that would be handed out, the bill would offers tantalizing opportunities for bureaucratic and policy reform.

On Monday, perhaps the most active and powerful Congressional player in these matters, Jim Oberstar, released his long-awaited draft version of the bill and, along with his committee-mates, vowed to push forward and get it passed into law by the end of September.

Oddly, that came on the heels of the Secretary of Transportation–a man who speaks for the president–requesting that it be kicked back to 2011 and that Congress craft an 18 month extension of the present legislation to cover the country’s needs in the meantime. Clash of the titans?

Eh, not really. The statements of most Senators who’ve bothered to address the matter have inclined toward delaying it. Faced with a White House and Senate who don’t want to play ball, Oberstar and his loyalists have never had much chance of getting their way.

Now, at a hearing today in the Senate, Barbara Boxer pretty much closed the door on the idea  the bill might happen this year. As chair of the Environment and Public Works committee, she would play a leading role in sheparding the bill through the upper house. And she’s saying unequivocally that the new bill will have to wait for 2011.

She gave a very clear reason: “It’s not because we [in the Senate] have a full plate”–dealing with healthcare, climate, and financial reforms–”it’s because we have no consensus on how to fund the new bill.”

“Oberstar wants to raise the gas tax,” she said, then noted it would have to go up by a dime just meet the current shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. She took a spin through the math of how much it would have to go up to cover the new investment he proposed in the bill. And while she neither she or her witnesses stated an exact figure, it would probably be 25 cents or so more. (The tax now stands at 18 cents per gallon.)

She shook her head a bit at the “huge” size of this increase.

Her colleague Voinavich was the only voice siding with Oberstar, arguing that it was important for economic and environmental reasons to try and get a bill passed this year. Boxer wasn’t won over. The Senate seems intent on passing a reform-free 18 month extension, and trying to answer the funding conundrum in the meantime.

At the end of the hearing Boxer suggested that in the meantime her climate bill would offer an opportunity for advancing a green transportation agenda.