It's not exactly full steam ahead for
House Republicans' transportation bill.
The last time Congress passed an honest-to-goodness surface transportation bill was 2005. It expired in 2009. Since then the federal transportation budget has been running on short-term extensions, eight of them so far. The House Republicans were planning to end that approach with a
dreadful, five-year piece of legislation that nearly everybody had one or another big problem with.
Consequently, it hasn't happened. Speaker John Boehner just hasn't been able to corral the votes. So the back-up choice was to pass another 90-day extension so the party could keep hashing out its differences. But that idea collapsed on Monday when it became obvious to Boehner he couldn't get enough Democratic votes to meet the need two-thirds threshold. Democrats oppose another extension, arguing that this won't produce any more progress than has already been made. If the House can't get it together by Saturday, the transportation budget is going to have one great big hole in it come April Fool's Day.
“We were talking to members on both sides of the aisle about how to proceed,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “When we have a decision, we’ll let you know.”
“The speaker has said many times that the House ought [to] be allowed to work its will,” [House Democratic Whip Steny]Hoyer, the Maryland congressman, said. “We would hope that the Republicans would put on the floor the Senate bill and let it be voted up or down, and I think it would pass. It has very substantial bipartisan agreement in the United States Senate. I don’t know why that shouldn’t be reflected over here.”
The two-year, $109-billion Senate bill passed with 22 Republican votes and Hoyer said he thinks it would pass the House if Boehner would bring it to a vote. The speaker has previously said he would go that route as a possible last resort, but stubborn opposition within his own deeply divided caucus hasn't yet come around on that yet.
The main sticking issue for the GOP, as we've reported here for weeks, is that the radical House transportation bill, which would set a budget that is an inflation-adjusted 21 less than in 2005. But that isn't enough for the hard-core. They want to cut it by 40 percent. Both factions are eager to wreck mass transit and kill programs for bikeways and pedestrian safety. And both want to pay for some projects with revenue from opening more public lands to oil and gas drilling, even though that revenue, which would take years to appear, wouldn't go anywhere near far enough to make up the difference in the cuts being proposed.
Three GOP representatives, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire and Judy Biggert and Robert Dold of Illinois, have signed a letter by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and two other Democrats urging House leaders to take up the bipartisan Senate bill passed nearly two weeks ago.
The Senate bill is flawed. But the worst of more than two dozen amendments—including authorizing the Keystone XL pipeline, opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to exploration and production of oil and gas, as well as undermining Clean Air Act regulation of mercury emissions—were eliminated in floor votes one after another. And the bill extends the commuter benefit for mass transit riders and funds bike and pedestrian projects that the House bill would ax.
What's truly needed is something that goes way beyond what either house of Congress is considering.
Policies such as offering a $5 billion-dollar award for the company that designs the first reasonably priced mass-producible automobile that gets 100 miles per gallon or its non-fossil-fuel equivalent. And investing $2 trillion over the next 15 years to enhance rail transportation, adding electrified intercity high-speed rail lines for both passengers and freight. And implementing federal mileage-based user fees. And providing federal matching dollars to deliver high-quality municipal and rural broad-band nationwide. (Yes, that would help with transportation.)
But as long as we have a stand-off over even a lousy bill, getting to something that actually acknowledges a better vision is out of the question.