Senior transportation committee staff members from the House and Senate
shared their candid assessments of the "difficult challenges" that lie ahead
as Congress faces development of a new highway and transit authorization
bill.
The key staffers for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and
the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee spoke to more than 100
members of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA)
who gathered in Washington for an annual industry fly-in.
James O'Keefe, the senior economist for Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking
minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said
that the long-term outlook for the Highway Trust Fund is grim. O'Keefe said
based on his calculations, "by 2015 we're going to have a $60 billion dollar
combined highway account, mass transit account deficit ... so something
difficult is going to have to be done." He added, "And, with $4 a gallon
gasoline it makes it politically difficult for people to look at changing
the user-fee rate."
Jim Kolb, majority staff director for the Highway and Transit Subcommittee
of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told the group of
highway builders that "This lack of resources that we have, this lack of
vision has really left us in a position where we are left fighting over the
scraps.
"The debate in Congress over the previous bill [SAFETEA-LU] ended up being a
fight about equity and earmarks ... and we can't repeat that if we want to
move this program forward."
Kathy Dedrick, majority senior policy director for the Senate Environment
and Public Works Committee, said this will be Sen. Barbara Boxer's
(D-Calif.) first opportunity to lead the highway and transit bill debate in
the Senate and it represents a real opportunity to do something
"transformational and new." Dedrick said if Congress does not come up with
the money to fully fund the program then "we're going to have to downsize
the program and come up with new ways of generating revenue to pay for it."
Dedrick said Boxer plans to focus on issues of "goods movement and clean
air" as the committee hammers out a bill. O'Keefe warned that "Senator
Boxer's vision about the environment obviously differs from Senator Inhofe's
views and I think reconciling the environmental vision will be difficult."
Jim Tymon, minority staff director for the Highways and Transit
Subcommittee, said that Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the ranking Republican on
the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is calling for a
National Transportation Strategic Plan. Tymon said the Congressman believes
that Congress needs "some kind of a document we can point to that justifies
why we need to invest a lot of money on the federal level."
