All federal transportation programs are at risk of shutting down if Congress does not pass a new authorization bill by March 31. House Speaker John Boehner has failed to find 218 votes in his chamber for his preferred five-year highway bill. Last month the House passed the first part of Boehner’s three-pronged approach, expanding offshore oil drilling as a way to fund federal transportation programs. However, many House conservatives believe the rest of Boehner’s bill is too expensive, and the lack of earmarks gives members nothing to sell in their districts. Yesterday Boehner told reporters that he plans to “see what the Senate can produce and to bring their bill up” in the House.
Boehner’s failure put the ball in the Senate’s court. In theory, passing a transportation bill should be straightforward, because portions of the bill already passed Senate committees with unanimous bipartisan support. But for the past month the Senate has been bogged down in disputes over how many amendments will be voted on when the chamber takes up the highway bill on the floor. This week the Senate moved toward resolution; after the jump I discuss how Iowa’s two senators voted on key procedural motions and amendments related to the transportation bill.
On March 6, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for a cloture motion to end debate on the transportation bill. That motion failed to win the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Iowa’s Tom Harkin voted for that cloture motion; Chuck Grassley voted against it, as did all but two Senate Republicans present.
That sent Reid back to the negotiating table with Republicans who had offered scores of amendments to the bill. He and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed on March 7 to allow floor votes on 30 proposed amendments. Only 18 of those relate to transportation policies; the other 12 are considered “non-germane.” The Transportation for America blog posted summaries of all 30 amendments that will be considered as the Senate debates the transportation bill.
Even as he declared “the finish line” on this bill to be in sight, Reid chastised Senate Republicans who, in his view, “wasted weeks of the Senate’s time trying to obstruct this important jobs bill.”
On March 8 the Senate began considering amendments to the transportation bill, but they only got through seven of the 30. The Senate will vote on the rest of the amendments early next week. All seven amendments considered yesterday were “non-germane,” i.e. unrelated to transportation policy.
A bipartisan amendment related to the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico passed easily.
The Senate cleared an amendment on Thursday, 76-22, that would send 80 percent of penalties paid by British Petroleum and other parties responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill to a special fund to “restore and revitalize” the Gulf of Mexico.
That amendment, also called the RESTORE Act, would allow the money, which was collected by the government for Clean Water Act violations, to be spent in five affected Gulf states.
Harkin voted for that amendment (roll call), while Grassley was among the 22 Republicans to oppose it.
An amendment to “compensate rural counties that suffer from a lack of revenue because of dormant federal lands” passed easily by 82 votes to 16 (roll call). Grassley supported that amendment, while Harkin was one of seven Democrats and nine Republicans to vote no.
An amendment “to delay and soften the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed boiler regulations” received 52 votes in favor, short of the 60 votes needed for adoption. Grassley voted for that amendment, as did all Republicans and a handful of Democrats. Harkin was one of the 46 Democrats to vote against it.
Senators rejected two amendments related to the Keystone XL pipeline project. A Republican proposal to approve the pipeline barely missed the mark, winning 56 votes in favor (roll call). Grassley supported that amendment, while Harkin opposed it. Minority Leader McConnell claimed President Obama called some Democratic senators to urge them to vote against that amendment.
A Democratic effort to block oil exported through the Keystone XL pipeline from being sold internationally fell way short, with just 33 votes in favor (roll call). Harkin supported that amendment, while Grassley opposed it.
A Republican amendment that “would have thrown open the doors for increased oil drilling and exploration along America’s coasts” gained just 44 votes in favor (roll call), including Grassley’s. Harkin voted against that proposal.
A Republican amendment calling for $10 billion in spending cuts by eliminating “duplicative programs” gained 52 votes (roll call), short of the 60 needed for adoption. Grassley voted for that amendment, while Harkin opposed it.
Finally, senators voted yesterday “to dismiss a budgetary point of order raised by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that would have driven the highway bill back to committee for failure to conform to the summer’s Budget Control Act (BCA).” Harkin was one of the 66 senators to support waiving that point of order, while Grassley was among the 31 senators to vote against the motion to dismiss Corker’s point of order.
Bleeding Heartland will follow up on the rest of the Senate votes on this bill next week. Getting the Senate’s version through the U.S. House will be a tall order, possibly requiring more votes from House Democrats than from Republicans.
Incidentally, Congress has passed several short-term extensions of federal transportation programs in recent years, but doing that again before March 31 doesn’t appear to be an option. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer explained why earlier this week:
Boxer dismissed the bulk of the non-germane amendments as “inflammatory” and said they had no business being attached to the federal transportation bill, which has now been stuck on the Senate floor for almost a month.
“If you vote to prolong debate you will have to answer your folks back home and tell them why you are playing Russian roulette with the highway bill because it all stops on March 31,” she concluded.
Boxer warned lawmakers [on March 6] that they did not have the option of passing another continuing resolution for highway programs, as they have done eight times since the last federal highway authorization measure expired in 2009. She said the Highway Trust Fund, which funds projects and receives money from a federal gas tax, is in jeopardy with a reauthorization. The trust fund isn’t taking in enough money from the tax to pay for projects.
“This is different because the trust fund is deficient of funds,” she said. “You can’t just extend. If you extend, there is a price to be paid.”
I wish the Democrats in Congress had made transportation a higher priority during the first two years of Obama’s presidency. House Transportation Committee Chair Jim Oberstar had proposed a six-year bill with $100 billion in federal funding for transit programs and $337 billion for highways. Unfortunately, House leaders moved forward in the summer of 2009 with a cap-and-trade climate change bill that died in the Senate anyway.
Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.