The bill, which would support $109 billion worth of federal transportation programs over two years if enacted — a much shorter time-frame than the usual five or six years — contains few sweeping changes to existing policy. Measures that initially weakened federal support for bicycle and pedestrian projects were mitigated by the Cardin-Cochran amendment, which was incorporated into the bill without a vote. The bill also gives transit agencies more flexibility to spend federal funding to maintain service during economic downturns, and equalizes the commuter tax benefits for transit riders and drivers. (We’ll have more policy details later today.)

“Some really good reforms have taken place here,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) from the floor immediately following the vote. He expressed his hope that the vote will lay the foundation for a “much longer, better, more robust highway authorization bill, but the first thing is to get into conference with the House and see what we can accomplish.”

“It was a great vote,” added Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). “If Senator Lautenberg were here, it would be 75.” Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey was one of only four Senators, and the only Democrat, not to vote. (Update: Lautenberg was attending the funeral of New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne, who passed away last week.)

Boxer and Inhofe, respectively the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, received a great deal of praise from their colleagues for assembling so much bipartisan support. “That’s hard work, and that’s the way the Senate should work,” Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said of their efforts. “I hope the House will take this bill, and I know they have their own opinions of how things should be, but it’s important to get this $110 billion out to America.”

What happens next is still a mystery.

The decision falls to Speaker John Boehner whether to amend and vote on the Senate bill in the House, or to pursue a different piece of companion legislation. So far, the House has given indications that it could do either, but has shown no movement beyond its five-year, $260 bill first introduced in the Transportation & Infrastructure committee in January.

Boehner’s bill, H.R. 7, attacks cities by gutting transit and bike-ped funds, but has also proven unpopular with Tea Party Republicans who object to so large a spending bill that lacks a convincing pay-for. Democrats, who were given virtually no role to play in crafting the bill, can all be expected to vote against it as it stands. For Boehner to reach 218 votes, he will have to make concessions to one end of the spectrum or the other.

No matter what the House eventually settles on, there remains the matter of the March 31 expiration date for all federal surface transportation funding. A House GOP staffer, speaking at the APTA legislative conference this week, said that there is essentially no chance of the House passing any kind of transportation bill, whether their own or the Senate’s, other than an extension of the current law before time runs out.

California's Highway 91 applied for a TIFIA loan. Will the T in TIFIA stand for "toll road?" Photo: Greater Riverside Chamber

TIFIA is a popular program, receiving $14 billion in loan requests despite only being able to loan about $1 billion in total this year. And under current law, the extent to which the project “helps maintain or protect the environment” makes up 20 percent of a project’s evaluation. In the EPW bill, the program is expanded by a factor of nine, but most evaluation criteria — including environmental protection — are omitted.

As Matt Sledge wrote in the Huffington Post:

Phineas Baxandall, a senior analyst at U.S. PIRG, said he thinks [EPW Chair Senator Barbara] Boxer may have cut a bad deal. He argues that doing away with TIFIA’s selection criteria means the U.S. Department of Transportation will be forced to give money to any transportation project that meets bare-bones financial eligibility requirements [...] Toll roads, backed by private investors looking to make a buck off of “public-private partnerships,” will be first in line, he argued, since they have plans that are “just ready to go off the shelf.” [...]

Los Angeles hopes it will get some of that TIFIA money. Not so fast, Baxandall said. “Places like Atlanta and L.A. are hoping that the new bounty of TIFIA will allow them to finance public transit expansions, but they are likely to find the money already claimed by private toll road projects in places like Florida and Texas.”

An LA Metro spokesperson told HuffPo he’s still “pretty confident” they’ll get TIFIA funds.

It’s hard not to see this as a step backwards, despite the funding increase. It wasn’t long ago that transit advocates were celebrating an end to the Bush-era’s “cost-effectiveness-above-all-else” rule in the Federal Transit Authority’s New Starts program. Now, Baxandall says, “at a time when the nation’s transportation system is starved for funds and there is a consensus that dollars need to be spent more wisely, it is outrageous that the one program that would be massively increased would no longer try to deliver the best bang for each buck.”

The good(-ish) news is that there’s still time to make changes to the bill. The Senate Banking Committee still has to work on a transit portion, the Senate Finance Committee still has to figure out how to come up with another $12 billion, the whole Senate still has to debate it all, and the House still has to do… anything.

Rep. John Mica says Boxer's bill will bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

From there, the letter changes tone:

However, I am concerned that the Senate two-year proposal does not address the fundamental problem of the long-term insolvency of our Highway Trust Fund. Your proposal will essentially bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund and make it impossible to provide any funding for fiscal year 2014.

The letter continues the debate between Mica and Boxer over how to supplement revenue from the national gas tax to fund transportation spending. It’s Mica’s response to a letter he received from Boxer three weeks ago, in which she questioned whether or not his plan truly maintained current funding levels.

Mica agrees with Boxer that current funding levels should be maintained (though her bill calls for current spending plus inflation, which Mica hasn’t bought into yet). But he has a problem with the fact that the Senate hasn’t identified the new sources of revenue necessary to do that. (He says he’s working on that himself.)

Mica attached a CBO report showing Highway Trust Fund deficits beginning in 2014 under Boxer’s scenario. Boxer has said that with the additional $12 billion from some other, yet-unidentified source, her bill will keep the HTF afloat. Current levels of spending, funded only with Trust Fund receipts, would start creating deficits even sooner – the Highway Account would run into red ink this fiscal year and the Transit Account in the next fiscal year.

Of course, it stands to reason that the Senate proposal doesn’t address 2014, since it’s a two-year bill. Further, the CBO merely ran the numbers based on assumptions that Mica made, which are not universally agreed upon. For example, the fact that all contract authority and obligations limitations are zeroed out for 2014 and then come back for the following year. That’s not a product of the money running out — it’s just the scenario Mica laid out.

In addition, Democrats note that Mica hasn’t found a funding stream for his six-year proposal either. A bipartisan group in the Senate has at least figured out a way to keep things going for two years, with a commitment to keep working on the long-term solvency issue.

So what’s Mica’s solution to the funding predicament? He hasn’t publicly embraced the stated GOP path toward transportation solvency — capturing revenue from fossil fuel extraction — but neither has he spoken out against the idea of expanding oil drilling to fund infrastructure.

That plan is about to move forward another step in the House. When House Speaker John Boehner said the House would vote soon on a bill to expanding energy production, Streetsblog wondered if he was referring to one of the bills that have already been introduced, and we couldn’t get the answer out of anyone.

Then, lo, Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH) announced he was introducing a third drilling-for-infrastructure bill: the American-Made Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act. Stivers links concerns about “rising energy costs, high unemployment and our aging infrastructure” and proposes solving them by opening up “untapped oil resources in the Outer Continental Shelf that will raise revenue from new off-shore drilling leases and provide a new dedicated source of revenue to fund infrastructure projects.” For more detail, check out the bill language here [PDF].

The House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources is holding a hearing on that bill Friday morning, followed that afternoon with a hearing on the virtues of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (though not necessarily for infrastructure – that’s just for the fun of it).

The Senate EPW bill represents a few steps forward and a few steps back. It won't transform America's car-based, oil-dependent transportation system. Photo: Raise the Hammer

Unlike in the House, where the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has full responsibility for the transportation bill, the Senate splits jurisdiction among several committees, so the saga isn’t over yet by a long shot. The Senate Banking Committee still needs to consider the transit part of the bill, Commerce will get its hands dirty on the rail portion, and Finance is going to figure out how to pay for the whole thing.

Non-Motorized Transportation Takes a Hit

Rarely have bike and pedestrian safety been so squarely at the center of a Congressional boxing match as during the debate over this bill. The fight over dedicated funding for bike/ped projects – much of it focused on the Transportation Enhancements program – threatened the delicate bipartisan consensus for this bill. What emerged was a compromise that placated even the most hardened TE haters like Sens. James Inhofe and Tom Coburn.

This morning, Sen. Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member on the committee and its chief TE opponent, explained the change.

There’s a difference of opinion and philosophy here as to how much money should be spent on things like bike trails, walking trails, highway beautification, museums and all that stuff. I think the compromise we came up with is a very good one because if a state wants to use that percentage – whether it’s 10 percent as it applies to the surface transportation or two percent of the total funding — they can instead put it in areas of unfunded mandates. And I can assure you there are enough unfunded mandates we have to comply with – I’m talking about endangered species, Americans with Disabilities, Historic Preservation and all that — we can use it. In my state of Oklahoma, that’s where we’re going to use ours. I think that is a great solution.

Sen. James Inhofe's home state of Oklahoma is now free to spend all its transportation money on roads.

What Inhofe is calling an “unfunded mandate,” however, is just part of the cost of building a road with federal funds. By allowing Transportation Enhancement money – previously reserved for non-motorized modes – to be used to offload some of the costs of building a highway, the Senate gives a green light to state DOTs to use every penny of that money for road-building expenses, if they want to. And if they don’t even want to do that, after 18 months, they can just opt out of the TE program altogether.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) introduced (and then withdrew) an amendment to restore dedicated funding for bike and pedestrian programs, with support from several other Democratic senators. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) also wants to introduce amendments making it harder for states to “opt out” of the TE program by ensuring that they solicit localities for TE uses before refusing to use the funds. And Sen. Tom Carper withheld his amendment requiring states and MPOs to draft plans for reducing transportation-related oil consumption.

In the interest of getting the bill passed out of committee, these amendments and many others were mentioned and withdrawn, to be reintroduced when the bill reaches the Senate floor. Carper said, however, that he was still committed to reducing transportation-related oil consumption and would continue looking for support for amendments to do that.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the committee, has gone to great lengths to assure bike/ped advocates that dedicated funding would be protected in the bill, and the compromise with Inhofe was hard-fought. She addressed Merkley and the other Democrats pushing to get dedicated funding for active transportation back in the bill.

This TE was a huge problem for us. My sentiments lie with yours; it’s fair to say Senator Inhofe’s lie with those who are trying to, let us say… end it. (Laughs) I don’t know how to better say it. These are moments when we almost threw up our hands; that’s why I so appreciate you not pressing for a vote today. What we have been able to do, working with Sen. Inhofe, is continue to have dedicated funding for TE under MAP-21, and in addition, TE projects have access to a larger funding pool, and states have the ability, actually, to fund more TE projects, depending on what they decide. In a state like Oklahoma, the senator has said, his state isn’t that interested. In a state like mine, oh my lord, they will grab those funds for bike paths. And what brought us together was this notion that we could agree that the fund have more flexibility.

Mixed Feelings

The showdown over bike/ped funding didn’t spoil the mood of jubilation among senators who have been working for a long time to pass a bipartisan bill, however. In stark contrast to the House, where Republicans introduced a transportation bill that was slammed by each and every one of their Democratic colleagues, the EPW committee has been working from the start to get bipartisan consensus behind MAP-21. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) commented that “we ought to change the name of the committee to the Goodwill Committee.” Indeed, such inclusive negotiation has not been a strong point in Congress lately.

And even transportation reformers have mixed feelings about the bill. It is devastating for bike/ped programs, entirely eliminating dedicated funding pots for Safe Routes to School and the Recreational Trails program, though they are still “eligible” for funding as uses under CMAQ (the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality improvement program, which funds a lot of bus, bike, and pedestrian projects). But as a whole, the bill isn’t as bad as some were expecting it to be a few months back. “We dodged a bullet,” one advocate told Streetsblog.

Sen. Barbara Boxer was pleased to get a bipartisan bill through her committee -- even though it lacked dedicated funding for bike/ped projects.

A predicted fight over the highway/transit funding split never materialized, and (although the transit title has yet to be written) the 80/20 split appears to be maintained. There’s also a strong fix-it-first ethic embedded in the bill, with performance measures attached to maintenance, which can help curb sprawl. Some groups appreciate the consolidation of programs and streamlining of project delivery as well.

Still, the Bipartisan Policy Center has publicly criticized the performance measures in the bill, saying that, “in a time of constrained resources, there should be a clearer focus on national goals and purposes, in determining eligibility for federal funding.” The group would like to see “a clearer relationship between the goals and performance principles incorporated into the highway performance program and those in the transportation planning process” – across all states [PDF].

And echoing Sen. Carper’s sentiments, the Sierra Club’s Washington representative, Jesse Prentice-Dunn, said the bill “does not go far enough to break our addiction to oil.”

“At a time when we are sending nearly one billion dollars overseas each day to pay for oil, it is critical that we give Americans transportation options that free them from the gas pump,” said Prentice-Dunn.

Most of the statements issued by transportation groups have focused on commending the committee for passing a reauthorization bill at all — certainly a positive step in what has been a slow-moving and combative process of getting a bill passed.

As for amendments, unlike Merkley’s attempt to re-insert bike/ped funding, some amendments were accepted as a block and inserted into the bill, including one limiting the number of performance measures in the bill, one requiring an “accountability study” of the CMAQ program, one to require “consultation” rather than “cooperation” with MPOs, and one asking US DOT to report on the potential for an electric car charging network. More details on those amendments aren’t yet available.

Sen. Max Baucus, who heads the Transportation section of EPW and chairs the Senate Finance Committee, assured committee members that “by hook or by crook” they’d find the money to fill the $12 billion gap between Highway Trust Fund revenues and the bill’s spending levels. He acknowledged that “the best idea we had” was “snapped up” by the House already – money “found” by making it harder for Social Security recipients to qualify for Medicaid was used already to offset the cost of eliminating a three percent withholding rule for government contractors.

With the bill passed, “the pressure is on” for the Finance Committee to find an acceptable source for that money, emphasized Sen. Inhofe – or else, he said, “It’s back to the drawing board.”

Senate EPW Chair Barbara Boxer said this summer that bike-ped programs would be preserved in the transportation bill, but they have been severely weakened.

While the 600-page draft that came out of Senator Barbara Boxer’s committee includes some key reforms and increases funding for the TIFIA loan program, it also eviscerates successful and popular programs to make biking and walking safer.

Called “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century” (MAP-21), the bill would streamline the existing eco-system of federal transportation programs. In addition, earmarks — set-asides for Congress members’ pet projects that have included famously wasteful items like the Bridge to Nowhere — would be eliminated once and for all.

But among the casualties are three key bike-ped programs: Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School, and Recreational Trails. Those programs would be consolidated and listed as “eligible uses” under an $833 million subset of the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ). That would represent a sharp drop from the $1.15 billion devoted to those programs in 2010. That year, Transportation Enhancements was funded at $878 million, Safe Routes to School at $183 million, and Recreational Trails at $85 million.

States could also divert their share of the $833 million to projects that add traffic lanes or don’t involve bike and pedestrian infrastructure at all. The bike-ped sub-category of CMAQ spending would be broadened to allow new road construction as an eligible use if the project “enhances connectivity and includes public transportation, pedestrian walkways or bicycle infrastructure.” Advocates are also concerned about a provision of the bill that allows states to opt out of using federal bike-ped funds altogether. The bill enables states that don’t use their bike-ped funding to spend it on other CMAQ projects instead.

The weakening of bike-ped programs is especially incongruous given the way Transportation Enhancements have withstood repeated GOP attacks this session. But EPW Chair Boxer has always made it a point to garner GOP support for this bill, and her counterpart on the committee, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, has been equally steadfast in opposing dedicated bike and pedestrian funding. Boxer had reassured advocates this summer that bike-ped programs would remain in the bill, but it seems they have been neutered in negotiations with Inhofe.

Meanwhile, MAP-21 does include some strong reform language in other areas. Earmarks would be eliminated by law — a tougher ban than the anti-earmark rule that currently exists. The bill also includes some measures intended to reduce bureaucratic hurdles and speed project delivery.

The bill would increase accountability for state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations — the agencies that actually decide how to spend most federal surface transportation funding — by establishing performance measures that would track progress toward specific targets, instead of handing the states a blank check. In theory, such reforms could serve as a check on sprawl. Streetsblog is looking into how the performance-based funding system would function and will have more in a future post.

The bill would also boost support for the financing techniques that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has pushed for under the banner of “America Fast Forward,” a concept that has enjoyed strong bi-partisan support. The new “Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Program” would expand the existing TIFIA loan program and allow states and cities to leverage revenue from local tax measures with federal financing to move projects forward faster. The bill would raise the maximum share of project costs funded through TIFIA from 33 to 49 percent and would reserve $1 billion in financing for the program annually, up from $300 million.

Noticeably absent is any provision for a national infrastructure bank. Instead the bill seeks to encourage state infrastructure banks, a position favored by House Republicans.

The EPW bill will be marked up in Boxer’s committee this Wednesday. Whatever emerges from the Senate will be drastically different than the House transportation bill, starting with the fact that GOP leadership in the House have pledged to pass a six-year bill, as opposed to the two-year bill put together by Boxer.

Republicans have never met a problem that couldn't be solved with a little more of this.

Republicans have a different idea, though: oil drilling. Several GOP representatives have introduced bills to expand fossil fuel extraction and use the proceeds to fund transportation infrastructure.

Somehow, whatever the problem is in Washington, Democrats want to solve it by raising taxes on the wealthy, and Republicans want to solve it with oil drilling.

When it comes to funding a quick jolt to the economy, it’s pretty clear that oil drilling won’t really cut it. “Any royalties from any new energy development wouldn’t start flowing to the Treasury for years,” said Erich Zimmermann of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Essentially this would be like spending money now to be paid for with revenues that may or may not be realized at some future time. Sounds like a recipe for a doubling down on our current deficit mess.”

Some speculate that a GOP oil drilling plan would explain the recent news that House transportation leader John Mica, with permission from his party’s leadership, is looking to raise transportation funding levels by an extra $15 billion a year in his proposed six-year reauthorization bill. After all, they’ve said that raising the gas tax is off the table.

A plan to pay for transportation and infrastructure through oil drilling would erode the entire basis of the transportation funding system, which historically rests with the Highway Trust Fund, paid for with fuel taxes and a smattering of other fees on driving and vehicles. In fact, Congress requires that at least 90 percent of what the Highway Trust Fund spends must be generated from taxes “related to the purposes for which such outlays are or will be made.”

“Generating additional revenues from an increase in energy production, therefore, would likely violate this requirement and at the very least result in an override of the Budget Act,” Zimmermann said, “but would also call into some question the importance of the ‘user pays’ principle itself as it relates to paying for the transportation system.”

Whether or not Mica is planning on paying for his transportation bill with oil drilling is a matter of speculation at this point. But several other Republicans have already introduced bills to that effect.

Take. for example, the Rebuilding American Roads Act, introduced last week by Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV). The bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to expand offshore oil and gas leasing, depositing the majority of the revenue into the Highway Trust Fund. Capito estimates that the drilling would yield $435.5 billion over thirty years. After taking out some for waterways, the Highway Trust Fund gets $13.4 billion a year – pretty close to the $15 billion a year Mica’s searching for. Capito says the bill has the added benefit of creating not just infrastructure jobs, but oil-industry jobs too.

Then there’s the Infrastructure Jobs and Energy Independence Act, introduced in May by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA). This one would spread the oil-drilling royalties around, giving 30 percent to the states where drilling occurs and 10 percent to the Treasury’s general fund. The remaining 60 percent is distributed among several “reserves” – for renewable energy, clean water, environmental restoration, conservation, clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear energy – and an “Infrastructure Renewal Reserve,” which gets 20 percent of the total.

That would bring in $22 billion a year for infrastructure, according to Murphy. The bill has 20 co-sponsors.

Murphy’s proposal could avoid running up against the Congressional language mandating the way Highway Trust Fund revenues are collected and spent by simply using a different mechanism, the Infrastructure Renewal Reserve. Still, Zimmermann’s not so sure this one would fly either.

“The bill stipulates that the highway and highway safety funds be distributed using the same formulas that are used presently,” Zimmermann said. “At present, distribution of a significant portion of funds from the Highway Trust Fund is based on the amount of gas tax paid in a particular state. These new funds, then, would be distributed based on formulas that have nothing to do with where the funds came from, and in fact create an entirely new class of ‘donor’ and ‘donee’ states.”

“Donor/donee” is always one of the most contentious issues regarding infrastructure funding, and in fact often leads to calls for the elimination of federal tax collection and funding of infrastructure altogether.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, made it clear today that these GOP proposals are a “non-starter.”

“That just sets up a huge fight, and that’s the last thing you want,” she told Streetsblog today. “I don’t want to pay for construction jobs by losing fisherman jobs, and tourism jobs, and recreation jobs, plus destroying some of our environment. It makes no sense. That’s just a controversial way to pay for this.”

Obama’s plan to pay for infrastructure jobs by raising taxes on oil companies and rich folks, on the other hand, has some pretty broad support – even among rank-and-file Republicans (if not their elected representatives): a recent Gallup poll found 70 percent support for it.

Meanwhile, Boxer said if Mica finds another, less controversial way to pay for it, she’d be up for switching back to a six-year bill. Her proposal is to fund transportation at current levels for just two years – at which point new revenues will definitely be needed to keep the Highway Trust Fund afloat.

There has been much discussion about plans for the Transportation Enhancements program in the upcoming surface transportation bill.  The Transportation Enhancements program will be included in the EPW Committee’s reauthorization proposal, with more flexibility granted to the states on the use of the funds within the TE program.

We look forward to the day when a bill is introduced, once and for all, and we can stop speculating about what is and what is not in it. Meanwhile, Boxer has been fighting like a mama bear to keep these important programs in the bill, and we salute her for that.

]]> http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/16/boxer-clarifies-transportation-enhancements-will-remain-in-the-bill/feed/ 3 http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/16/last-minute-deal-preserves-bikeped-funding-but-for-how-long/ http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/09/16/last-minute-deal-preserves-bikeped-funding-but-for-how-long/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:15:03 +0000 Tanya Snyder http://dc.streetsblog.org/?p=115884 [...]]]> UPDATED with comments from Sen. Tom Coburn’s staff.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has relented on his push to strip Transportation Enhancement funding from the six-month surface transportation extension, clearing the way for Senate passage last night and a White House signature today.

Sen. Barbara Boxer says dedicated funding for bike/ped projects is preserved, though Sen. Coburn appears satisfied that Transportation Enhancements is dead. Photo: AP

In exchange for releasing his stranglehold on the Senate (and the estimated 80,000 workers that could lose their jobs, at least temporarily, if the FAA bill lapsed) Coburn will get to insert his language into the long-term bill, when this latest extension expires.

According to CQ Today, Coburn said, “We’ve got an agreement that the next bill will be an opt-out for people on enhancements.” James Inhofe, the top Republican on the EPW committee which wrote the bill, “seems to have played a key role in brokering the deal,” CQ Today reports.

After the vote, Boxer quibbled with Coburn’s description of what will be in the next highway bill. Boxer said she and Inhofe had worked out “reforms” in the transportation enhancements section of the bill and met with Coburn to discuss them before the deal was worked out.

“We felt he would be pleased with the reforms,” she said. “It gives flexibility, without doing damage to the important programs in there.”

Boxer said Coburn made clear that he was “not going to vote for any more extensions” but allowed the current highway funding extension to move forward. “There’s not an opt-out,” she said. “You’ll see what we did. But no, there’s no opt-out. . . . There’s still dedicated funding. It gives more flexibility to the states as to how they will use that funding… It’s flexibility for the states within the transportation enhancements program.”

Clearly, Boxer is in a tight spot, having to placate some of the most conservative members of the Senate while also satisfying the active transportation advocates, in her state and around the country, who have held her feet to the fire on saving dedicated funds for bike/ped programs.

Sen. Coburn’s staff, meanwhile, is alarmed by Boxer’s comments. With the Senate out of session for the week, Coburn is back in Oklahoma and his aides are conferring with him. “Senator Boxer made an agreement with him to include the opt-out provision,” one staffer told Streetsblog. “The fact that she went on the record saying something that is in opposition to their agreement is concerning.”

Streetsblog could not reach the EPW Committee for comment before this story was posted, but we’ll update it if we hear more about exactly what was decided. It may just be a shuffling around of programs, with the essentials of bike/ped dedicated funding maintained, just in a different form.

Coburn was under intense pressure from senators on both sides of the aisle yesterday who wanted to avoid a weekend session, as well as the partial shutdown of the aviation system and the furlough of thousands of workers.

State DOTs and the transportation construction industry have been urging Congress for two years now to pass a long-term bill to restore some certainty to the business. They say the constant extensions create a chilling effect on new projects. Still, given the looming possibility of no extension at all, they are welcoming the six-month extension at current funding levels.

Voting against the extension last night were some of the most conservative members of the Senate. In addition to Sen. Coburn, Jim DeMint (R-SC), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Pat  Toomey (R-PA).

“Where was your outrage when we were building roads and bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan?” she demanded.

She challenged Republicans to debate her and explain themselves. “They may defend why they allowed projects to go through abroad but not here,” she said. “They may say why they want to cut safety programs from the highway bill that will save lives.”

Then she launched into a defense of Transportation Enhancements.

That Transportation Enhancements program that they want to do away with was a bipartisan idea that came from Republican John Chafee and Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1991… Twenty years, we’ve had that program! Can we look at it, can we reform it, can we make it work better? Of course! But one of our Republican friends said, “Just cut it and you don’t even need a vote; just take it without a vote.”

No. If we’re going to vote on that, we’re going to fight about it and have a vote. But let’s have a vote!

She also expressed her outrage that a bipartisan extension bill, sent over from the House, can’t get to a vote in the Senate. Indeed, it’s looking like the Senate will miss tomorrow’s deadline for an FAA extension, which is now rolled together with the surface transportation extension.

Sen. Tom Coburn has an axe to grind with bicycle safety. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

It’s unclear how we went from a House determined to cut spending levels by more than 30 percent to a House unanimously committed to passing a bill with current spending levels. It’s unclear even that this unanimous vote plan will work. Republican party discipline isn’t what it used to be, what with the Tea Party revolt just loving to accuse House Speaker John Boehner of being a tax-and-spend liberal.

However, rumor has it that House Republicans are being told that the extension’s spending levels don’t change the appropriations levels the House is willing to approve, and that’s $27.7 billion for the year for highways and $5.2 billion for transit. So if the extension authorizes $19.8 billion for highways for the first six months and $4.2 billion for transit, that’s fine: It just means that for the whole second half of the year, highways would only get $7.9 billion and transit would only get $800 million. Those are deadly cuts, but it appears that transportation leaders are putting off that fight till later in order to pass an extension now.

Meanwhile, if the extension bill doesn’t pass the House by unanimous consent, the House will need to follow normal rules of order to pass it by majority vote. That means it’ll need to wait a full 72 hours between the posting of the bill and the vote, and that would mean a Wednesday vote. It could also open the door to a messy amendment process.

Speaking of amendments: In the Senate, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn is planning to file an amendment to cut Transportation Enhancements from the six-month extension. It’s good news that he’s doing it as an amendment and not a hold on the bill, since a hold is a unilateral move to force the Senate to utilize a much more time-consuming process to vote on the bill. His amendment will likely fail, since many senators who would normally vote with him to cut bike/ped funding are committed to passing a clean extension, with no amendments.

If Coburn’s amendment does fail, he can lose graciously — or he can try to filibuster. It’s unclear whether he plans to do that. While the House is hoping to have 100 percent support for the bill, insiders fear that in the Senate, the bill could fall short of the 60 percent majority it needs to overcome a filibuster.

The Senate hasn’t yet introduced a (six-month) surface transportation and (four-month) FAA extension bill to replace the four-month surface transportation extension passed by the EPW Committee last Thursday. It won’t go through the same process – the extension will be filed as an amendment attached to an enormously popular bill that House Majority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly been holding on to for just this purpose – as a vehicle to get more controversial measures passed by adding them as amendments. The bill itself deals with sanctions against Burma, a cause dear to Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s heart.

So, the transportation extension will be an amendment attached to the Burma bill, and Coburn’s TE cut will be an amendment to the transportation amendment. Clear enough?

Meanwhile, according to our sources, Sens. Boxer and Inhofe of EPW agree that any amendment – even to the six-month extension – would be a violation of their delicate bipartisan deal on the two-year reauthorization. They require a clean extension.

Sen. James Inhofe still wants to kill bike/ped funding -- but later. Photo: TPM/wdcpix

And yesterday, as frazzled Senators rushed around the Capitol during their first day of legislative work after the August recess, the reality began to set in that the clock is ticking to pass an extension before the surface transportation programs expire on September 30.

In addition to passing the extension this morning, Boxer’s committee has also been crafting a two-year, $109 billion reauthorization that would keep spending at current levels.

Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, the ranking member on the committee, voted for the clean four-month extension, saying it will buy the time needed to craft the two-year bill. He says he won’t support Sen. Tom Coburn’s push to kill transportation enhancement funding, which includes bicycle and pedestrian projects – for now. But when it comes to the two-year bill, Inhofe would like to say goodbye to all bike/ped projects.

“I’m all for totally cutting the transportation enhancement funding,” he said in an interview with Streetsblog. “I’ve talked to Senator Boxer about it and I think we can come up with something where we do away with those enhancements.”

Boxer has pledged to maintain dedicated funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs in the bill.

Inhofe did acknowledge, however, that TE comprises “less than 2 percent [of the transportation program], instead of the 10 percent that some people think it is.” (Coburn is one of those people.)

Inhofe defended his decision to support a clean extension, saying the most pressing transportation need in Oklahoma is state of good repair, particularly for bridges. “We’re tied with Missouri for dead last in the condition of our bridges,” he said. “We also have a lot of maintenance problems.” At this morning’s meeting, he mentioned the mother of three who was killed by a chunk of falling concrete under a bridge in his state.

He said he wishes the two-year bill were even more “robust” than it is, and disparaged attempts in the House to make it smaller. He encouraged his “Republican friends” to support the bill, saying, “The chairman [Boxer] has been very good in working with us on streamlining in this bill, and some of the onerous regulations we otherwise had to deal with. You don’t get that in an extension; that’s why we have to get a two-year bill.”

Inhofe emphasized the need for performance measures in the bill, saying, “One of the few things that works well in government is a reauthorization bill where you have criteria. And that criteria determines what you’re going to be doing in each state.”

But Inhofe, a climate denier, has fought (seemingly successfully) to keep emissions reduction standards out of the bill. He even claimed President Obama’s support for emissions standards is “the chief obstacle” to adequate transportation funding.

Inhofe’s fellow Oklahoma Republican, Tom Coburn, has threatened to block the extension if the sliver dedicated to bike/ped projects, streetscaping and historic preservation isn’t eliminated.

Coburn has a history of holding up important bills until he gets his way, but in this case wouldn’t yet say whether he’ll put a hold on the vote or offer an amendment to cut the transportation enhancements. An amendment would be easier to overcome than a hold, which can be done by a single senator. Still, even if he does put a hold on the bill, insiders say that can be overcome. It just means the Senate will have to dedicate more time to the vote, but they say Reid has budgeted ample time.

Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions on the EPW Committee also had an amendment he wanted to add, which would codify the president’s controversial decision to lower ozone standards until 2013, but he agreed to withdraw so the committee could avoid getting bogged down in what was sure to be a lengthy and heated argument. Boxer thanked him, and Inhofe said he would agree with the amendment but it wouldn’t pass the committee anyway.

Sessions voted for the clean extension but said yesterday he had mixed feelings about whether or not transportation enhancements should be slashed. He said he is skeptical of the value of bike/ped funding.

He even used active transportation as a scapegoat for project delays and cost overruns, claiming that in his hometown, “they stopped construction of a highway because the federal government insisted on bike paths” and “it’s going to delay for over a year and add 10 percent to costs.”

“So I’m very dubious about mandates of that kind,” he said. “A lot of the things we’ve been spending money on have not shown themselves to be ‘enhancements.’”

Like Inhofe, Sessions’ priority is highways, which he calls “a productivity enhancement for America.”

Meanwhile, it’s up to Montana Democrat Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee and a key member of EPW, to find the $12 billion needed to bridge the gap between what the two-year Senate bill spends and what’s left in the Highway Trust Fund.

Baucus reports: “We’re finding it. We’re close.”

But as for where the money will come from, “That hasn’t been determined yet.”

Get used to it.

Obama said the action was taken in the interest of “reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover,” but environmental groups slammed the decision as “a huge win for corporate polluters,” in the words of League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

NRDC President Frances Beinecke said, “The Clean Air Act clearly requires the Environmental Protection Agency to set protective standards against smog — based on science and the law. The White House now has polluted that process with politics.” Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said she was “disappointed” with the decision.

The decision has a major impact on efforts to reform transportation, NRDC’s Deron Lovaas told Streetsblog.

“It frankly makes our job harder, in terms of reducing pollution from mobile sources,” Lovaas said. “If they had set the standard closer to 60 parts per billion, as opposed to 80, regions and states would have to get really serious about transit, and really serious about smart growth, and really serious about reducing vehicle miles traveled, because the gains couldn’t all be made through better technology.”

Business interests had long lobbied against the tighter standards, and they expressed their pleasure at the president’s announcement. The Chamber of Commerce cheered the move, rationalizing that by waiting for the statutorily-required rule-making in 2013, the EPA “can base its decision on the most recent science, not 2006 science.”

According to the National Review, some Republicans had called the ozone requirements “the single most harmful regulation proposed by the administration” and estimated that the total cost of implementation would have been “at least $1 trillion over a decade and millions of jobs.” House Speaker John Boehner called Obama’s concession to polluters “a good first step” and said he was glad the White House “recognized the job-killing impact of this particular regulation.”

Did we mention it would have saved 12,000 lives?

State-by-state impact from shutdown of federal highway and transit programs. Source: Senate EPW Committee.

Two key Democratic senators today released state-by-state numbers showing how many jobs would be lost if the current surface transportation authorization bill is not extended by September 30. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), chair of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter to their Senate colleagues urging them to act and highlighting the job loss numbers for their state.

Across the country, they say, 1.8 million jobs will be threatened nationwide if the SAFETEA-LU transportation law is allowed to lapse. They say they are working on “a bipartisan proposal to reauthorize surface transportation programs for two years at current funding levels” but they need an extension in the meantime “to allow time to complete work on this legislation.”

Boxer’s home state of California stands to lose the most in case of a lapse: More than $4.6 billion and nearly 165,000 jobs are at stake. But that doesn’t mean that rural, low-population states like Johnson’s South Dakota are unaffected. According to Robert Puentes at the Brookings Institution, South Dakota is one of six states that rely on the federal government for more than half of their road money. And five other states spend more federal money than state or local money on roads. That could give Republican senators from states like Wyoming, Alaska, and Alabama pause before letting the federal transportation program founder.

You can see the state job numbers here.

A full bike rack outside the Senate building where today's EPW hearing was held. Photo: Tanya Snyder.

You’ve worked with us on Safe Routes to Schools, because that’s so crucial, and we kept it, and bike paths, and we kept it, and recreational trails, and we kept it. Tough debates, giving here, taking there. But that has remained in the bill.

The reauthorization negotiations have been largely overshadowed by the ongoing talks over the debt ceiling. For a long time it appeared that if the debt talks had any impact on the transportation program, it would be to institutionalize the 33 percent cuts mandated by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget. However, as Boxer mentioned a few times during today’s hearing, the outlook is looking brighter.

The bipartisan Gang of Six has a plan to cut the deficit and raise the debt ceiling. That plan calls for very little spending – but the one area they did see fit to spend on was infrastructure. The Gang of Six plan calls for the following:

Tax reform must be estimated to provide $1 trillion in additional revenue to meet plan targets and generate an additional $133 billion by 2021, without raising the federal gas tax, to ensure improved solvency for the Highway Trust Fund.

According to our sources, that additional revenue would stabilize the trust fund for the next 10 years.

The vote of confidence by the Gang of Six is encouraging and should be a shot in the arm to the Senate. If that debt plan passes, it could even give House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica enough political cover to raise the total price tag of his bill.

EPW was able to get bipartisan buy-in, even from one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, James Inhofe (R-OK). Despite his conservatism on nearly every issue, though, Inhofe says he’s a “big spender” when it comes to two things: national defense and infrastructure.

Many senators mentioned the oft-repeated number $2.2 trillion: the amount the U.S. would have to spend over the next five years just to get the nation’s infrastructure to “passable” condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That’s eight times more than the Senate bill foresees.

Still, the Senate bill remains larger than the House bill and for a shorter duration, and it remains to be seen how the two chambers will reconcile their competing visions. Terry O’Sullivan of the Laborers’ union said the House proposal “locks in failure for six years” and “gives up on America.”

O’Sullivan and nearly everyone else who spoke mentioned the massive job loss that would be caused by the low funding levels in the House bill – 630,000 jobs, according to Sen. Boxer. “We’re inviting unemployment,” she said.

Boxer said she’d visited a job re-training program that was teaching people to become chefs. Several of the participations had been construction workers who had “given up” on finding work in their field, she said.

Boxer pleaded with transportation advocates to keep contacting their senators – including her – to encourage them to move the reauthorization bill.

“We need the people to communicate with those on the Finance Committee on both sides of the aisle, and this committee, that you really need us to do this,” she said. “A lot of you said it took courage for us to come together. We need to have you in the background, with a loud voice.”

She said she felt that the public support was behind her in going forward with the bill, but advocates need to keep it up, especially with the Finance Committee which is still searching for $12 billion to close the funding gap. “They have to feel that this is a priority,” Boxer said. “If they don’t sense that America wants this, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Sen. Max Baucus, who chairs the Finance Committee and also leads the EPW Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said he’s “fairly confident” and “optimistic” that they’ll find the money.

Baucus was the first lawmaker to publicly call for a two-year bill, but at the hearing admitted it wasn’t ideal. “Chairman Boxer held out for six-year bill as long as possible,” he said. “But the issue is funding.”

At the end of the hearing, Boxer expressed frustration that President Obama hasn’t been more present in these negotiations – except for his recent mentions of an infrastructure bank. “We have to convince the administration to please weigh in, now,” she said. “Yes, we want an infrastructure bank; we love it, it’s great, but it’s not the core program.”

Deron Lovaas of NRDC said the administration has been “AWOL.” He said he’s disappointed the only administration bill that’s been made public was a leaked, “pre-final” version that had major sections that don’t reflect actual administration positions. He said President George W. Bush released an administration draft.

“The previous administration actually did a better job of managing their approach to this bill than the current administration,” Lovaas said, “which is disappointing, given how much skill Sec. LaHood and his team have.”

Boxer reiterated her desire to get the bill out of committee before the Senate leaves for August recess.

Steve Bruno of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen cautioned against over-reliance on the private sector when building public infrastructure.

“Isn’t it wonderful to see the bipartisanship behind the infrastructure bank?” Boxer said. “Count me in. I think it’s a wonderful thing.”

She and other senators affirmed that raising the gas tax, or switching to a VMT fee, is off the table. Still, she criticized House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica for “walking away” from the Highway Trust Fund since it’s coming up short. “It’s a 36 percent cut in our basic program,” she said. “That’s a loss of 630,000 jobs.”

In the absence of new revenues, it becomes more important to leverage the scarce public dollars that are available, so the committee hearing focused on financing tools – specifically, an infrastructure bank.

Kerry and Hutchison have put forward a bipartisan bill to create an infrastructure bank with $10 billion in seed money that would fund not only transportation but energy and water projects as well. It would only make loans, not grants.

A somewhat more idealistic proposal is the Lautenberg/Rockefeller bill, which focuses exclusively on transportation. They also propose $10 billion, but over just two years, with $600 million a year for grants. Another major difference is that it would be housed within USDOT, whereas Kerry’s proposal was to create a completely independent entity. The Lautenberg/Rockefeller plan hews more closely to the administration proposal than Kerry’s does.

“I think our bill is the answer,” said Sen. Hutichson today. Addressing Sen. Rockefeller, who chairs the committee, she said, “I would love for this committee to pass our bill, and I bet you probably want your bill to be passed. So maybe we can work together or maybe we can report both of them.”

“Well, we usually work together,” Rockefeller said, and indeed, all subsequent comments from all the bill sponsors included messages of “marrying” the two bills.

Several witnesses, from USDOT and the private sector, applauded the concept, saying an infrastructure bank will release private money and create jobs without exposing the taxpayer to risk. But Steve Bruno, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, had some questions he wanted answered before government goes too far with this love affair with private enterprise:

Who maintains control of the infrastructure? Who is liable if private entities encounter financial difficulty or withdraw if the rate of return is lower than expected? What are the long term costs to government? When does the public’s needs superede the private investor’s agenda? And where will the resources be applied?

Many of these are the same questions U.S. PIRG put forth this week in its report, “High-Speed Rail: Public Private or Both?”

“Some projects are never going to produce a profit,” Bruno went on to assert. “Bridges, highways, passenger rail and public transportation facilities are intended to provide for the public good, not corporate profit. The people of the United States should be the primary beneficiaries of any infrastructure legislation, not the corporate shareholders.”

J. Perry Offutt, who works on infrastructure financing for Morgan Stanley, agreed that “It is important to demonstrate that a project is commercially and financially viable, and has political support. Because of certain return expectations and the desire for stable cash flows, some projects might not typically lend themselves to P3’s such as many transit projects.” He said availability payments were a way to bring transit projects into the fold by protecting the private investors from risk – though that option then recalls Bruno’s question about whether the public sector bears the financial risk for a private institution’s profit.

Freshman Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) had a similar critique from a conservative perspective. “The people of this country are very tired of bailouts,” she said. “How can we assure taxpayers that this doesn’t just become another government entity that ends up bailing out bad projects and that we end up privatizing the profits while socializing the losses?”

These warnings are important to keep in mind as the infrastructure bank idea moves forward, but it does appear to be moving forward, at least in the Senate. The House proposal – at least, the outline we’ve seen so far – doesn’t include an infrastructure bank. But then, neither did yesterday’s Senate bill outline, and it seems that we may hear more from EPW at tomorrow’s hearing about the possibility of including such an entity in its final bill.

Boxer’s priority has been the expansion of the TIFIA loan program, and the House and Senate have both agreed to massively expand it to $1 billion. Advocates urge caution to ensure that both TIFIA and the infrastructure bank examine not just a project’s credit-worthiness but performance measures. Whether a project is funded by formula, by infrastructure bank, or by TIFIA, with so little public money around, it’s of primary importance to make sure that every project meet major national goals of economic growth, connectivity, safety, and the reduction of fuel consumption.

Today I am pleased join Senator Boxer to announce that we have completed bipartisan negotiations on the highway policies that will be included in the next transportation bill. This is a tremendous step forward. Chairman Boxer has shown her willingness to work with us to produce a bill that should enjoy strong bipartisan support. Our next step is crucial: given the state of our economy, and the debate here in Congress, we must work with Chairman Baucus and Republicans on the Finance Committee to find a way to pay for this bill.

This confirms the rumors we’ve heard: that the Finance Committee has not yet found the $12 billion to cover the gap between the Highway Trust Fund revenues and the bill’s expenditures. The good news, though, is that it means the Senate Republicans have given the OK to the funding levels, which — though a disappointing low point from which to begin negotiations — are higher than in the House bill.

The bill is still highway-heavy because the transit and rail titles are not yet in it. Though the transit title, at least, is reportedly ready to go, we don’t know when we’ll see a full bill with all provisions included.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and the EPW staff met with several environmental groups today to talk about the bill, but according to one person who was there, the staff is still “holding their cards very close.” Very little new information came of the meeting. From what we understand, though, bicycle and pedestrian funding — while a minuscule part of the overall bill — became a very large point of contention the two sides had to overcome. As we said earlier, the details of the bike/ped funding have yet to be announced, but so far it looks grim.

Either way, the months of negotiations are over, according to the EPW statement, and we can look forward to a bill rollout soon. House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica still appears to be holding off on introducing his full bill until House leadership clears space for it on the floor schedule, and that won’t be until after the August recess. But Boxer is still indicating a desire to pass her bill out of committee before the recess. It’s the only way to have a fighting chance of passing a bill, and not just a straight SAFETEA-LU extension, on September 30, when the current extension expires.

The Senate EPW Committee just posted a transportation bill outline on their website, and despite previous assurances by committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA), there appears to be no dedicated funding for bicycling and pedestrian programs in the bill. The outline focuses on the consolidation of programs and streamlining project delivery, much like the House bill. The performance measures mentioned in the outline – while not necessarily a comprehensive list – don’t include emissions reductions, undoubtedly at the insistence of climate-denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), ranking member of the committee.

One of Chicago's celebrated new bicycling facilities, the Kinzie Street protected bike lane. Will any federal support for bike/ped projects remain after the next transpo bill passes? Photo: Josh Koonce/flickr

The outline confirms that the Senate is working on a two-year bill but does not include the dollar amount. “Consolidation” is the name of the game these days and the Senate plays along, making seven core surface transportation programs into five, including a new Transportation Mobility Program, which “sub-allocates” some funds to metropolitan areas, and a National Freight Program, which proponents of multi-modalism have long pushed for.

It preserves the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, which funds some bike and pedestrian programs. Transportation Enhancements, another major way such programs are funded, will probably now be under CMAQ. It’s unclear whether the Recreational Trails Program will move to CMAQ as well. But although bike and pedestrian projects will still be eligible for funding, there appear to be no explicit funding guarantees for bike-ped projects, and how funding levels will shake out in the final analysis is anybody’s guess.

Like the House, the Senate bill offers states “the flexibility to fund these activities as they see fit” – which amounts to a revocation of the federal commitment to funding this work. Many states, absent a federal mandate, will spend virtually nothing on bike/ped infrastructure.

Bicycling advocates had asked for dedicated funding that doesn’t pit them against road projects, the same funding proportion as they had in SAFETEA-LU, and changes to Safe Routes to School. None of those features appear to be in this bill.

“It’s hard to know without seeing the details, but at first blush it doesn’t look good for bike and pedestrian issues,” said Andy Clarke, president of the League of American Bicyclists. “Perhaps it’s to be expected that there’s nothing upfront in the language about protecting dedicated funding, given that it was a topic of some contention among the protagonists. But it’s pretty troubling to see no reference to any of the issues that affect cyclists and pedestrians – nothing about complete streets, nothing about dedicated funding.”

The Senate bill expands and modifies the TIFIA loan program, as does the House bill, and does not mention an infrastructure bank. Boxer indicated in the fall that she was more friendly to an expansion of TIFIA than to a new entity, though more recently she has said that she supported the inclusion of an infrastructure bank in the bill.

On performance outcomes, the outline says:

MAP-21 focuses the highway program on key outcomes, such as reducing fatalities, improving bridges, fixing roads, and reducing congestion, in order to ensure that taxpayers are receiving the most for their money. States will set their own targets for improving safety, road and bridge condition, congestion, and freight movement.

Probably one of the greatest disappointments in the bill – or at least this outline – is the omission of emissions reductions as one of those performance goals. To set that as a national priority would elevate the importance of transit and active transportation programs. The emphasis here rests squarely with roads.

“Improving bridges” and “fixing roads” don’t really sound like performance outcomes, and bicycling advocates fear that, while safety is an essential goal, the fact that there are about 60 times more car fatalities per year than bike fatalities will translate into a far greater focus on car safety than bicycle safety.

By contrast, the Bipartisan Policy Center has suggested setting national transportation goals such as economic growth, metropolitan accessibility, energy security and environmental protection.

The bill does seek to improve state and metro planning processes “to incorporate a more comprehensive performance-based approach to decision making.”

The Banking Committee has not yet inserted its transit language, nor has the Commerce Committee come forward with its rail language, so this outline doesn’t say anything about those elements.

We understand that the full bill has not even been circulated to Democratic committee members yet, indicating that, despite the false hopes of last week, a formal bill introduction is not yet on the horizon. The committee is holding a hearing this Thursday on “issues” for the reauthorization. Boxer has promised to hold a hearing before marking up the bill, but the bill would have to be introduced a week in advance if the hearing were going to discuss actual bill text, and there is no longer time for that if the committee is going to mark up the bill before the August recess. So Thursday’s hearing will likely be a more general discussion of transportation issues, using this brief outline as a guide.

Sen. Tim Johnson, chair of the Banking Committee, joined Sen. Boxer in urging quick passage of the transportation bill. But what's holding it up? Photo: AP

The Senate adjourned for the weekend last night with no word about the bill, positive or negative. And just now, the chairs of the Banking and EPW Committees sent out a joint letter to their House and Senate colleagues urging quick action on a transportation bill. Whom are they urging if not themselves?

The statement focused on the “630,000 private sector jobs in highways and transit will be lost in 2012” if no bill is passed. It also makes a push for the bill that Sen. Barbara Boxer has been pushing, as opposed to the House proposal.

Please support a bill which maintains funding at the current levels, includes significant reforms to make the nation’s transportation programs more streamlined and efficient, and provides robust assistance for transportation projects under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program to leverage state, local and private-sector funding.

Many groups support our current spending levels approach, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the AFL-CIO.

Some see the statement as a bad sign that the GOP isn’t playing along, and that Boxer is left grasping at straws to try to move something forward. Others took heart that it signals good news that the transit title isn’t being targeted, since Banking is the committee with jurisdiction over transit and the joint letter shows they’re working with Boxer on EPW.

It’s getting hard to read the tea leaves, but we’ll keep digging around. With any luck, there will be something concrete next week.

Sen. Barbara Boxer tells reporters nearly 500,000 construction jobs would be lost if the House cuts transportation funding. Photo: Alice Ollstein

Though she had initially pushed for a six-year bill, Boxer made it official that the EPW proposal is for a two-year bill that will only cover current funding levels plus inflation—about $109 billion over the two years. She said the Finance Committee is “very optimistic” that it can find the needed $6 billion per year in addition to the Highway Trust Fund revenues. There are “various ways to get there,” she said, but her preferred method is to redirect funds from the expensive wars abroad.

“We are now spending $12 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan,” she said. “We need $12 billion over two years. We are winding down those wars. It seems to me there’s a lot of funding available for this. It’s a very small amount compared to what we’re spending every month.”

At today’s press conference, Boxer focused mostly on the urgency of saving 500,000 construction sector jobs and 100,000 transit jobs, citing new Federal Highway Administration stats about the ramifications if Congress passes Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, with its 30 percent cuts to transportation. Boxer’s aides pulled out charts detailing just how many jobs would be lost in each state, and Boxer pointed to the over 43,000 that her home state of California would shed.

“People just think you can say, ‘Oh, we’re going to cut 30 percent or 20 percent or 50 percent’ and they don’t really look at the ramifications,” she said. “Here are the ramifications: In my home state, 43,000 families would be devastated. And the nation’s bridges and highways are not going to be in any way considered safe, because with that tremendous cut we can’t do the things we need to do to keep up with our needs.”

As we reported recently, some criticize Boxer’s jobs-centric approach, since jobs are just a small part of the bill’s long-term boost to the economy, but jobs and unemployment are still the hot-button issues of the day, and clearly Boxer thinks it’s a winning issue.

As for the parts of the bill that the “Big Four” on the EPW Committee still need to iron out, Boxer wouldn’t give details, but said, “I think we’re getting extremely close. I don’t see any major disagreements at all.” She declined to comment on either an Infrastructure Bank or guaranteed federal funding for bike/ped projects, but confirmed that there will be no earmarks allowed.

“This is a very strong priority for the nation—you can’t be a great economic power without investing in infrastructure,” she said.

Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chair of the House Transportation Committee, will unveil his bill tomorrow, but whether it will get marked up – or even formally introduced — before the August recess is still up in the air. Boxer says her bill will be marked up “in a couple of weeks.”