Senate appropriators recommended a highway obligation ceiling of $33.843 billion and proposed to increase transit spending to $7.35 billion.
With a little more than three weeks left in the fiscal year, Senate appropriators moved the $91 billion FY 2004 transportation spending bill through both subcommittee and full committee mark-up. The subcommittee version was approved quickly by voice vote.
The Senate bill would propose to set the FY 2004 highway obligation limit at $33.8 billion, an increase of some $2.2 billion over the current year, and $400 million higher than the level proposed by the House appropriators. Added to that would be another $931 million for the programs which are exempt from the obligation limitation, bringing the total highway program in the Senate bill to $34.7 billion.
For transit, the Senate has proposed a spending level of $7.35 billion, an increase from the FY 2003 level of $7.178 billion. That number also represents a higher level than recommended by the House, which set its figure at $7.279 billion for FY 2004.