DALLAS — The draft transportation bill released Monday night by a Senate committee calls for $242.4 billion of federal funding for highway projects over six years and would authorize $1 billion a year for the popular Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act credit enhancement program.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plans to vote Thursday on the highway bill, which keeps federal funding for highways through fiscal 2020 at fiscal 2014 levels plus inflation. The committee is expected to approve the bill this week.
The Senate bill would reauthorize the current two-year highway bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21, but would add some grant programs and would streamline the permitting process for federally funded projects.
The Senate highway bill follows the outline of an agreement on transportation funding announced in April by Environment and Public Committee chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., ranking Republican member Sen. David Vitter, from Louisiana, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.
A separate bill for funding mass transit programs is to be developed by the Senate Banking Committee. The Senate Finance Committee will determine how to fund the highway bill, which has a built-in deficit of billions of dollars a year.
Finance Committee chairman Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said last week that the Highway Trust Fund must receive an infusion of $10 billion to carry it through calendar year 2014 and $8 billion more in fiscal 2015 due to sagging gasoline tax revenues. Keeping the fund solvent for six years without an additional revenue source would require a total of $100 billion, he said.
Lawmakers have transferred a total of $54 billion from the Treasury's general fund to the Highway Trust Fund since 2008.
The Congressional Budget Office's baseline projection estimates revenue coming into the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund from the gasoline tax at $34 billion a year.
Federal highway funding in the Senate bill from the highway account of the Highway Trust Fund is set at $38.4 billion in fiscal 2015, rising to $42.6 billion by fiscal 2020. Total funding, including grants and other programs, is set at $257.8 billion over six years - from $40.9 billion in fiscal 2015 to $45.1 billion in fiscal 2020.
The proposed highway bill will increase the amount of funding each state receives every year, the Environment and Public Works Committee said in a summary it released with the text of the bill.
"It provides new long-term funding, giving state and local governments the certainty and stability they need to improve and develop our nation's transportation infrastructure," the statement said. "These investments will create new jobs, provide a boost to our nation's economy, and keep us competitive in the global marketplace."
The Senate bill establishes a national freight program funded at $400 million in fiscal 2015, rising by an additional $400 million a year to an allocation of $2 billion in fiscal 2020.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said at the daily White House press briefing on Monday that the Senate bill does not adequately fund surface transportation infrastructure.
"We cannot meet the needs of a growing country and a growing economy by simply maintaining our current level of effort," Foxx said. "We must do more."
President Obama's proposed highway bill would allocate $199 billion for highway projects over four years. The administration's highway measure, the Grow America Act, also would fund TIFIA at $1 billion a year.
"Even if Congress today funded our transportation system at recent levels, we'd still be on the same track," Foxx said. "We'd still be on the track towards a slower, less safe nation where rush hour becomes rush all afternoon."
The Obama proposal is funded with gasoline tax revenues and $150 billion from revisions to the corporate tax code aimed at foreign earnings of U.S. corporations.
President Obama is scheduled to make a speech highlighting transportation infrastructure investments on Wednesday at the $3.9 billion Tappan Zee bridge renovation project in New York.
