With deadline approaching, Senate pay-fors don’t look so bad to House
By Heather Caygle and Lauren Gardner, Politico Pro
10/07/2015 07:23 PM EDT
Call it the legislative version of beer goggles.
As House lawmakers scramble to pull together a multiyear highway and transit bill before the Oct. 29 deadline, the mixed bag of pay-fors attached to the Senate’s transportation bill is suddenly looking more attractive.
Even before the Senate passed its long-term bill – which authorizes six years of policy but only provides three years of funding – House lawmakers dismissed the plan, saying both chambers should work together on an international tax overhaul that would keep highway and transit programs flush with cash for six years or more.
But now, with international tax talks stalled and the deadline looming to renew highway and transit policy, House lawmakers have become more open to the idea of adopting some or all of the offsets included in the Senate bill.
“I haven’t made the final decision on that,” House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said when asked about the Senate offsets. “But we’re going to have to move the bill some way, somehow shortly.”
And while another short-term extension is likely, lawmakers are under pressure from interest groups and congressional leadership to reach agreement on a long-term bill by December, with no one having the appetite to drag the issue into a presidential election year.
“I think most of us viewed [the Senate bill] as kind of, at least during the summer, dead on arrival. I don’t think we viewed it as a serious effort, but it sounds like we’re going to have to start looking at them again,” said Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), a proponent of using revenue from international tax changes to boost transportation funding.
Delaney was one of several members of the New Democrat Coalition who took part in a Wednesday briefing with Shuster and Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on transportation bill negotiations.
“Ryan’s strong view is that the Senate offsets are inevitably in our future,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), vice-chair of the coalition. “Actually, he said, ‘Get used to them.'”
But even if House negotiators decide to move forward with offsets mirroring the Senate plan, several sticking points still stand in the way of a final bill.
Lawmakers are still at a standoff over how much money to pour into transportation programs, with Republicans aiming for funding closer to current levels, while Democrats are calling for a much bigger investment over the life of a six-year bill.
“The numbers they’re talking about on the House side are inadequate to generate any enthusiasm on the Democratic side and they need Democratic votes,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee.
“So if you’re talking about a status quo bill with inadequate funding that six years from today puts infrastructure in worse shape than it is today, what’s the selling point?”
House Transportation Committee leaders are now aiming to mark up their transportation bill the last week of October, just days before the current authorization expires. But that will only happen if Shuster and DeFazio are able to hammer out disagreements over policy provisions and funding levels.
“They don’t even go to Senate levels,” DeFazio said, comparing funding numbers floated by House Republicans to what was included in the Senate’s highway and transit bill.
“That’s what they proposed, and then we we’re talking about bigger numbers with Ryan and now Ryan’s not talking anymore so I have no idea,” he said.
Shuster said Wednesday a price point for a long-term transportation bill exists that enough conservative lawmakers would accept, while criticizing the Senate for reaching for a number that’s too high.
“Right now, from what I can tell, it’s the Senate that’s the hold-up,” he told reporters. “They want a number that’s far greater than we can pass through the House, and there is a number out there that’s greater than the baseline that we could pass through the House.”
Shuster was instructed late last week to move forward with a long-term transportation bill that didn’t rely on a windfall from international tax changes after talks between Ryan and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) deadlocked over funding levels.
While numbers were never publicly disclosed, Schumer wanted to strike an international tax deal with Ryan that would yield a windfall for U.S. infrastructure needs for six years.
“Sen. Schumer and Chairman Ryan have made progress but there is not yet agreement on the size of the transportation package or changes to the international tax system,” an aide to the New York Democrat said at the time. “Sen. Schumer continues to push for a higher level of transportation funding.”
DeFazio said no matter what the outcome of current talks, he’s holding out hope that lawmakers will tuck some extra Highway Trust Fund dollars into a big year-end budget deal.
House and Senate leaders are currently in talks with the White House on a wide-ranging budget deal when current government funding expires in mid-December.
“I think if we’re going to get significant funding since we’re dealing with flat earth people here who don’t believe in user fees … then the only place we might get significant revenues seems to me to be in some giant year-end budget deal,” DeFazio said.
Further complicating efforts, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is threatening to hold up any short-term highway and transit bill if it includes a deadline extension for railroads to install the anti-collision system known as positive train control.
“The reports I have heard indicate that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee might take action on a bill during the last week of October. In that case, if a short-term extension does become necessary, let me put everyone on notice,” Boxer said on the Senate floor. “If they think that they are going to pull out their favorite issue, such as getting an extension for positive train control on a short-term extension or as a stand-alone bill, they are wrong.”
She added that she will oppose “any attempts to cherry-pick issues and deal with them outside of the long-term bill.”
DeFazio, for his part, didn’t sound too worried: “I think that’s a great rhetorical negotiating position, which I don’t think will hold up very long toward the end of the month when we have maybe one vehicle moving to take care of the PTC extension,” he said.
He added: “We’ll see how it all pans out.”
Kathryn A. Wolfe contributed to this report.
Tags: policy, transit, transportation