Senate conflicted by many benefits, costs of highway bill
WASHINGTON (AP) Every day for the past two weeks Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has urged his colleagues to pass a highway bill he says is "vitally important" to creating jobs, repairing the nation's crumbling infrastructure and making highways safer.
But the Senate's six-year, $318 billion highway and mass transit bill faces serious roadblocks, primarily President Bush and Frist's fellow conservatives who are leery of spending so much in the shadow of federal deficits that surpass one-half trillion dollars.
Frist has scheduled a vote on Thursday to break a Republican-led filibuster. Even if he gets the 60 votes needed to move the legislation toward passage, still ahead is debate in the House, which is deeply divided on the spending issue, and an administration veto threat.
The legislation would replace a six-year, $218 billion highway program that expired last year but has been temporarily extended until the end of this month. The administration, citing tough financial times, has recommended a $256 billion package, while the Senate plan calls for about $318 billion: $255 billion for highways, $56.5 billion for mass transit and $6 billion for safety programs.
The House Transportation Committee wants $375 billion, but House GOP leaders say there's no way they would go along with a proposal to pay for the increase by raising the federal tax, now 18.4 cents a gallon, that drivers pay at the gas pump.
Frist, R-Tenn., who met with the president Monday evening, said he would support slimming the Senate bill to $290 billion, but even that was too high for the president. The Senate bill is substantially higher than the president wants, "and he made that pretty clear," Frist said.
With little chance of quick resolution, the House plans to act this week to extend the current program four months. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested a one-year extension. "I think that would probably be of benefit to the taxpayers of America who are deeply concerned about our overspending," he said.
Senate conservatives, led by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., have effectively blocked movement on the bill, arguing that it is extravagant in an age of record deficits and, on a somewhat different tack, that it shortchanges their home states.
But Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., another fiscal conservative, said his colleagues had "picked the wrong bill" to make a stand on fiscal restraint. "If there's one thing that we should not leave undone this year, it is this highway bill," he said, adding that he would continue to fight for money for his state. "I'm going to curry favor with the chairman until the last dog dies."
Federal highway construction money is supposed to come entirely from the highway trust fund, paid for by the gasoline tax. How that money is divided up among the states is a constant source of contention.
In the past, some states received as little as 70 cents for every dollar they paid into the fund. This time, said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, every state will get back at least 95 cents by the end of the program in 2009.
But McCain, an opponent of the bill, said the number of donor states — those that pay more than they get back — will rise from the current 28 to 31. One of the new donor states will be Gregg's New Hampshire.
"The people of California are being asked to send almost $2 billion to Washington, D.C., so that it can be redistributed through some arcane funding scheme to the lucky 19 states that would get back more than they put in," McCain said.
The two Republican managers of the bill, Inhofe and Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., are both fiscal conservatives who argue it would not add to the deficit.
They defended the Senate Finance Committee, which came up with an additional $35 billion through various budgetary maneuvers that increase revenues for the trust fund.
The administration has threatened a veto of any bill that increases taxes or takes money from the general Treasury fund, but Inhofe said it was a "moral issue" that all gas tax money go into highway building. The Finance Committee, he said, was acting to "retrieve a previous raid on the highway trust fund" by the general fund.
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