WASHINGTON - Two congressmen are urging House leaders to bring pending transportation bills up for a vote and deem the one with the most votes as having passed the chamber under a "Queen of the Hill" rule.
"It is time for the House to vote so that members can be held accountable by our constituents," Reps. Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Reid Ribble, R-Wis., told House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a one-page letter.
"By mid-summer, the Highway Trust Fund will be insolvent and our nation will again be left without a long-term transportation plan," the two congressmen wrote. "We all agree that America urgently needs a sustainably funded, long-term surface transportation bill.
"Many proposals have been introduced in the House that would provide sustainable transportation funding, including H.R. 1846, H.R. 680 and H.R. 625. Yet the House has not been given the opportunity to vote on any of them," they wrote.
H.R. 1846, introduced by Rep. James Renacci, R-Ohio, in April and co-sponsored by Welch, Ribble, and 29 other lawmakers, would raise gasoline and motor taxes to provide more revenue for the Highway Trust Fund and would index those taxes to inflation. H.R. 680, introduced by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., in February and co-sponsored by 33 other House members, would also raise motor rules taxes backing the HTF.
H.R. 625, introduced by Rep. John Delaney, D-Md., in January, would require companies to repatriate certain offshore earnings at a lower tax rate to provide revenues to capitalize an infrastructure bank for state and local projects.
Welch and Ribble said votes on all of these proposals and the adoption of one under a "Queen of the Hill" rule "will ensure that the will of the House is adopted and predictability and certainty in our transportation program is restored.
"America needs a long-term surface transportation plan. It is the job of Congress to provide it," they told the House leaders.
Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, announced on Friday that the committee will hold a hearing on Thursday, June 25, to examine financing options for the HTF called "Unlocking the Private Sector: State Innovations in Financing Transportation Infrastructure."
The witnesses at the hearing will be Mitchell Daniels, Jr., president of Purdue University in Indiana, and Shaileen Bhatt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation in Denver.
