Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The leaders of each political party in the Senate have reached a deal on their two-year, $109 billion transportation bill, clearing the way for as many as 10 votes on amendments to the bill later today.

With a deal struck, prospects for passage of the Senate bill have now improved dramatically. Majority leader Harry Reid had tried to bypass much of the amendment process with a cloture vote on Tuesday, but couldn’t assemble enough votes to move forward. Top Republican Mitch McConnell had indicated prior to that vote that he felt a deal was near, and urged his colleagues to vote “no” in order to give him more time to negotiate.

Reid and McConnell have agreed to bring 30 amendments up for a vote. Of those, 18 are “germane” amendments dealing with specific provisions already included in the bill, and 12 are “non-germane” and deal with oil drilling and the Keystone XL pipeline, among other things. The Hill is reporting that approximately 10 amendments will be voted on today, with the rest waiting until next week. T4America has also launched new amendment tracker that reflects the changes to the bill.

The germane amendments need only a simple majority to pass, while the non-germane amendments will require 60 votes, a tall order in the Democrat-controlled Senate. However, the Obama administration is already lobbying Democrats to oppose the Keystone XL amendment, perhaps an indication that it might have the votes to pass. Keystone XL has already passed the House as part of a domestic energy production bill.

The underlying bill for these amendments will be Reid’s 1500-page combination of the EPW, Banking, Commerce, and Finance titles. It is the same transportation bill that failed Tuesday’s cloture vote, but it has already been agreed to by “unanimous consent,” meaning that it doesn’t need a vote of its own to be the basis for today’s amendments.

Votes will be broadcast and webcast on C-SPAN2, and Streetsblog will be tweeting updates all day.

Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to win a key vote in the Senate today that would have forged significant progress toward passage of a two-year transportation bill. It is the second time a cloture vote on the bill has failed since it was first brought to the Senate floor.

Needing 60 votes to invoke cloture, only 52 Senators voted in favor of the measure and 44 voted against it. The vote means Reid and top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell must continue to negotiate a list of amendments that will be allowed for individual consideration on the floor. It also gives the House time to regroup — House Republicans are meeting privately today and tomorrow to decide what, if anything, they will try to pass before the current extension of the 2005 transportation law runs out on March 31. With Bill Schuster taking the lead on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the House seems to be doubling down on its highway-centric approach to transportation policy.

Prior to the Senate vote, Reid and Senator Barbara Boxer urged their colleagues to vote yes. “We have a chance today to vote to end this dithering,” said Boxer, before launching into a state-by-state enumeration of how many jobs depended on passage of a transportation bill.

But McConnell had other plans. Before the vote began, he proposed that the Reid bill be replaced with his own, one that included a different list of amendments, including several which Reid described as “inflammatory.” Under McConnell’s plan, the Senate would then wait until the House put forth a bill of their own to move forward.

With the House bill in shambles and the March 31 deadline fast approaching, Reid rejected McConnell’s proposal, setting the stage for his cloture vote. In the end, the vote gave McConnell at least part of the delay he initially sought: “I’d encourage a ‘No’ vote, but not to stop the bill,” McConnell said, explaining that he just needed more time to negotiate with Reid.

Two Republicans broke ranks with their party and voted for cloture: Scott Brown (MA) and Susan Collins (ME). There had been some speculation that Collins’s fellow Mainer, Olympia Snowe, who is retiring at the end of the current term, would vote yes as well, but she voted with McConnell — as did James Inhofe and all the ranking Republican committee members who helped their individual portions of the bill pass committee with bipartisan support.

Two Democrats did not cast a vote — Alaska’s Mark Begich and Vermont’s Patrick Leahy.

Reid himself cast the last vote against cloture for procedural reasons. Faced with inevitable defeat, Reid’s “no” vote will allow him to revisit the motion later.

During the current push for multi-year transportation bill, the Senate has been known more for its spirit of bipartisanship than any visionary policy advances. Now that the bill has hit the Senate floor, however, it’s getting a little ugly.

Republican Senators have proposed a number of contentious amendments in order to stall the bill’s passage. Senator Barbara Boxer, whose Environment and Public Works Committee got the ball rolling on the bill last December, says these amendments are “ridiculously unrelated.” For example, Rand Paul has proposed an amendment that would cut off American aid to Egypt until the 19 American civilians there are allowed to leave. Other amendments try to thwart the president’s compromise on insurance coverage for contraception.

In response, majority leader Harry Reid has “filled the tree,” proposing enough amendments to fill all available slots before any other senator can do the same. The move triggers another cloture vote, this time on specific amendments themselves, rather than the entire bill. The vote, scheduled for tomorrow, will decide whether the Senate goes forward in combining the EPW, Commerce, Banking, and Finance titles into a single bill.

Boxer, who had been generally upbeat about the Senate bill’s prospects for passage, is getting frustrated with the delay tactics, according to The Hill:

“Right now, there is no path forward,” Boxer said even as she vowed to continue pushing for a clean vote on the transportation proposal.

“I don’t see it,” Boxer said. “It’s one of those things where people just say ‘I don’t care. We’re not going to (approve) this bill.’”

The delay also means that other noteworthy amendments will have to wait until the current quarrel dies down. Two Democratic Senators and two Republicans have just cosponsored an amendment that would restore dedicated funding to the Recreational Trails program, protecting biking and walking programs that the underlying bill undermines. The Cardin-Cochran amendment, which gives metropolitan areas more control over federal funds, is also picking up cosponsors from both parties.

The fate of these two amendments and more — T4America has a handy page to track their progress — hinge on Senate leadership setting aside parliamentary scheming, and soon.

Read more…

Seems like bicycling heroes are coming out of the woodwork these days. I’d missed this in all the coverage of the extension, but was gratified to see that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s opposition to Sen. Coburn’s machinations weren’t just in the interest of smooth procedure. The man actually cares about bike/ped issues.

From The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also defended [Transportation Enhancements] on grounds that bicycle paths would help Americans consume less gasoline.

“The issue [Coburn] has presented is a little unusual,” said Reid on Thursday morning. “He says that he doesn’t like bicycle paths being part of the highway bill. Well, for most Americans, they are absolutely important. It’s good for purposes of allowing people to travel without burning all the fossil fuel on the highways.”

Reid added that he had taken his morning run in Washington and noticed “scores” of people commuting by bike or foot.

Sen. Boxer has been in rare form as well, standing up to defend federal funding for bicycle and pedestrian programs. The article quotes her as saying Transportation Enhancements are “about saving lives.” Take that, everybody who belittles TE as “beautification” projects.

Meanwhile, Sen. Coburn’s aides appear concerned that he and Boxer have two different ideas about the deal that was struck yesterday, allowing the bill to pass and the senators to go back home for the weekend instead of staying to fight it out. Next week, we should all have a clearer idea of exactly what is and what isn’t going to be in the final bill (if one is ever passed).

More information when we get it.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has placed a “hold” on the transportation extension, along with a bill to continue sanctions against Burma and to provide disaster relief to areas affected by Hurricane Irene and other storms.

When just one senator objects to a “unanimous consent” vote — the quickest way for the body to pass legislation — the leader has to allow for 30 hours of debate. Coburn has an amendment he wants to introduce, and he was concerned that Majority Leader Harry Reid wasn’t going to allow for amendments. Coburn’s action ensures that he will be able to bring his measure to the floor. The amendment, as we have reported, would eliminate the 1.5 percent of federal transportation funds that go to Transportation Enhancements, about half of which is spent on bicycle and pedestrian programs.

Reid isn’t happy about Coburn’s use of the hold to delay important legislation. “It’s a pretty good way to legislate around here, be a dictator and say either take this or leave that,” Reid was quoted as saying in a story by CQ.

In addition to his amendment to strip TE funds, Coburn wants to offer an amendment that would offset the cost of the disaster aid, so that it doesn’t add to the deficit.

As we’ve said, the votes will still go through, just more slowly. And while we at Streetsblog are no experts on the disaster relief bill, we think the odds look good that enough senators will be frustrated with Coburn’s insistence on slowing down the process that they will vote against his push to kill Transportation Enhancements.

It seems that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not only given up on a carbon cap in this year’s energy bill, but also ruled out provisions promoting transit and smart growth. In Reid's effort to pass an energy bill this year, even a weak bill, advocates say that chances to include major transportation reforms don’t look promising.

A large part of the bill Reid introduced yesterday, officially known as the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Accountability Act of 2010 [PDF] is devoted to oil spill cleanup. The only section that mentions transportation encourages the expansion of plug-in electric and natural gas vehicles, with billions of dollars in incentives for consumers and federal and commercial fleets. Neither of those methods of personal transportation do enough to address the core goals of averting catastrophic climate change and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. The batteries in electric vehicles are often powered by coal, and natural gas is a finite resource.

What happened to the idea of including language to support smart growth and invest in transit? After Reid said last week that the Democrats didn’t have the votes for a comprehensive energy bill, advocates expected a watered-down version. But some still hoped for a chance to offer amendments drawn from the Oil Independence Bill introduced by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and others last month.

Transit advocates are less sanguine now. “It seems likely that Senator Reid will probably not allow amendments to the bill,” said Smart Growth America policy associate Stephanie Potts. “We’ll wait and see.”

Her comment was echoed by Colin Peppard, the Natural Resources Defense Council’s deputy director of federal transportation policy. “It’s a pretty limited package,” he said. “It seems like the opportunity for moving something broader and more meaningful has been closed off for the time being.”

But “there are still plenty of opportunities” to introduce legislation for transit support this year, said Peppard. “It’s a full schedule, but it’s our job to put pressure on” Congress for those issues.

Merkley’s spokesman Mike Westling hedged his bets. “I’m sure it’s something we’ll look at,” he said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

A source on Capitol Hill said the likelihood is low that transit provisions will make the final cut in the energy bill, because Reid wants to get it passed before Congress leaves for its August recess. But Merkley and Delaware Senator Tom Carper are still hoping to push elements of the CLEAN TEA legislation -- which tied climate goals to smarter transportation and land use planning -- perhaps as part of the eventual overhaul of the national transportation bill.

"We know we don’t have the votes."

With those seven words last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dashed hopes for a comprehensive climate bill. Prospects also dimmed for a transportation component in the final energy legislation that emerges from the Senate. Reid is expected to announce that plan later today.

Up until Reid's announcement, advocates for transportation reform had reason to believe the Senate bill might include some form of action to improve fuel efficiency, increase transit options, and encourage more sustainable land use patterns -- ideas drawn from the Oil Independence Bill introduced by Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley. The oil independence legislation contained elements of Delaware Senator Tom Carper's "CLEAN-TEA" bill, introduced in March 2009, which would have funded the planning and implementation of green transportation projects with revenues from a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system.

Instead, Reid indicated that his bill will likely contain language dealing only with the Gulf oil spill and some energy efficiency provisions.

"The package that Reid announced [Thursday] doesn’t address climate change at all,” said Colin Peppard, deputy director of federal transportation policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "What we were hearing from staff on the Senate side is that basically up until pretty close to Reid’s announcement, there was still consideration for pieces of the Merkley bill."

Reid’s announcement “took the entire environmental community off-guard,” said Stephanie Potts, a policy analyst with Smart Growth America.

While the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe became an emblem of the need to wean the nation off oil, it did not stiffen many spines in Congress. In fact, said Potts, the Gulf spill may have worked against a broader climate bill by narrowing the avenues for compromise and horsetrading. Without expanded offshore drilling as a bargaining chit, there were few lures to win the votes of some recalcitrant Senators, especially those from coastal states.

In the end, the globs of brown in the Gulf of Mexico didn't overcome the absence of will to raise revenues. "The biggest obstacle is lack of funding," said one source close to the legislation, who said some transportation component may still surface in the final bill. "[Reid's bill] has not been released. There are opportunities to effect influence on that legislation, that bill, via amendments."

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Over the weekend, Democratic leaders in the House and Senate urged the Bush administration to extend financial aid intended for Wall Street to struggling domestic carmakers, a move that could have the support of President-elect Obama.

The Times reports that on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid co-signed a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asking that part of the $700 billion bailout package be directed toward Detroit. "A healthy automobile manufacturing sector is essential to the restoration of financial market stability, the overall health of our economy and the livelihood of the automobile sector’s workforce," they wrote.

The letter was issued following a Thursday meeting between Congressional leaders and representatives of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors, as Big Three sales continue to plunge. On Friday, GM announced that it could begin running out of cash in 2009.

Rahm Emanuel, incoming White House chief of staff, hinted on Sunday that his boss could be amenable to the Pelosi-Reid proposal. Again, the Times: 

When asked on ABC’s "This Week" where Mr. Obama stood on the issue, Mr. Emanuel seemed to suggest that Mr. Obama, as a last resort, might be open to tapping the rescue fund to help carmakers, calling the auto industry an "essential part of our industrial base."

He added that Mr. Obama has asked his economic team to look at ways to involve the industry in shaping an energy policy that weans the country off foreign oil, seeking ways to use the $25 billion in loans that Congress passed in September to help make auto plants more capable of producing fuel-efficient cars.

The Bush White House, for its part, has indicated it would not support using bailout funds for the Big Three.

Photo: MarkinDetroit/Flickr