Congress hits $281B accord for highways

WASHINGTON -- Congress ended weeks of contentious negotiations Tuesday by agreeing to a five-year, $281 billion transportation bill to boost spending on roads and transit systems by billions of dollars each year.

In its first year, the bill increases spending on highways by $2.1 billion above current levels. By 2020, the increase will be $6.1 billion above the $50 billion that has been spent in recent years.

Spending on transit will increase from the current $8.6 billion to almost $10.6 billion in 2020.

"I'm proud. I'm relieved. We are in dire need of this," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which helped get the bill through a conference committee. "It will result in millions of jobs over the period of the bill, and they can't be outsourced. They have to be done in America."

The House and Senate still must vote on the final bill. Passage is expected by Friday, when government authority to process aid payments to states expires.

U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, who represents Arkansas' 1st District and who served on the conference committee, said lawmakers were aware that new funding needed to be approved before the stop-gap funding ended.

"This may be one of the fastest conference processes, certainly since I've been here. Both chambers were anxious to get it done. ... It came together quickly," the Republican from Jonesboro said.

But Boxer, who credited close collaboration with Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., for getting the job done, said the process was so complicated that it provided motivation to find a long-term solution.

"This was a painful process," Boxer said. "The transportation bill is a huge priority for both parties."

The bill falls short of the $400 billion over six years that Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has said is needed to keep traffic congestion from worsening, and it puts off the difficult decision of how to sustainably pay for transportation programs.

The federal 18.4-cents-a-gallon gas tax, the main source of highway trust fund revenue, hasn't been increased since 1993 and no longer covers annual spending on transportation.

Bills arrived in the conference committee with very different funding provisions. The committee settled on a House plan to use money from the Federal Reserve and a Senate proposal to reduce the amount of interest the Fed pays to banks -- as ways to help fund the transportation bill.

The funding plan replaces the current 6 percent dividend, that the Fed pays to large banks, with a floating rate tied to the 10-year Treasury note, which is expected to be less than 6 percent. The House's portion of the plan transfers about $49 billion over 10 years from a Fed capital account to the Treasury, and counts the money as new revenue.

But the fundraising tactics have drawn criticism from some lawmakers who say the $49 billion is just a paper transfer that raises no new money.

Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association, said he opposes the provision that would likely reduce the banks' dividend.

"Banks shouldn't be used like an E-Z Pass to pay for highways," he said.

'Freight corridors'

One of the hallmarks of the bill is the creation of programs to focus transportation money on highways that are regarded as important "freight corridors" in a bid to reduce major bottlenecks and speed the delivery of goods.

The agreement also protects funding for transit, which some lawmakers had argued should be cut from the bill. It increases money for pedestrian and bicycle programs that also have come under attack, and it includes nearly $200 million to speed installation of a railroad safety feature known as positive train control.

In addition to increasing spending on roads and transit, the bill increases funding for freight transportation and creates a grant program for freight; restricts rental-car leasing of recalled vehicles; bumps up to $295 million the cap on liability claims faced by railroads; and triples the amount that the National Highway Safety Administration can level in civil fines -- from $35 million to $105 million. It also includes a measure to reauthorize the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

Crawford said he was especially pleased that the bill would allow agricultural vehicles to continue using a key northeast Arkansas road if that road is added to the interstate highway system.

Without that exemption, some agricultural workers in that area would have to take a 90-mile detour to cross the St. Francis floodway once U.S. 63 becomes Interstate 555.

Crawford said the language in the compromise also restores $3 billion for federal crop insurance programs.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas' 4th District said that though he needs to review the entire conference report before deciding whether to support the bill, the deal appears to have a lot of positive features that make it likely to win approval.

The first-term congressman from Hot Springs noted that it contains no gas tax increases and that it provides long-term funding for highway projects.

"I know it's been a real headache not only for the Arkansas Department of Transportation but for transportation departments across the country trying to plan projects and not knowing if funding's going to be there or not," Westerman said.

Arkansas' U.S. Sen. John Boozman said the proposal provides greater stability.

"In order to build roads, you need to have a long-term, dedicated source of money. That's something we've lacked, really, for the last decade. So this would allow the states to plan," the Republican from Rogers said.

A spokesman for Arkansas' 3rd District U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, said the Rogers Republican is "encouraged that the House and Senate were able to work together to bring this 5-year paid-for surface transportation reauthorization to fruition."

In a statement, Arkansas' 2nd District U.S. Rep. French Hill, a Republican from Little Rock, said he is still reviewing the conference report. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also is reviewing the deal, a spokesman said.

Information for this article was contributed by Ashley Halsey III of The Washington Post; by Joan Lowy of The Associated Press; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 12/02/2015