Reauthorization in US House
WASHINGTON — After protesting the administration’s limits, the House Transportation Committee on Wednesday approved a slimmed-down spending bill that would funnel $275 billion into highway and mass transit projects over the next six years.
The legislation sent to the full House by voice vote was $100 billion under what committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, and most on the panel said was needed to deal with the nation’s congested, unsafe and deteriorating transit systems.
House panel OKs highway measure
Budget is lowered to $275 billion
By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press March 24, 2004
The White House, citing the need for belt-tightening in an age of rising budget deficits, has proposed a highway budget of $256 billion through 2009.
The Senate in February on a 76-21 vote passed a $318 billion bill. The House could take up its version as early as next week.
To show its unhappiness with the White House spending limits, the committee also approved, by voice vote, legislation allowing for $375 billion in spending.
The committee inserted into the bill a provision allowing Congress to take another look at the bill again in two years, when a stronger economy might warrant a boost in spending.
“With this bill we say we live to fight another day,” said Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, top Democrat on the panel.
Advocates of a more robust bill also stressed that it could create hundreds of thousands of new construction jobs in a jobless economic recovery.
Rep. William Lipinski, D-Ill., leading Democrat on the highways subcommittee, said it was ironic that the White House was opposing the $375 billion bill when the jobs issue was the biggest obstacle to the president’s re-election.
Young and Oberstar had proposed paying for the larger bill by raising the federal gas tax, which has stayed at 18.4 cents per gallon over the past decade, by about 5 cents.
The White House strongly opposed any tax increase to pay for a bigger bill.
The $275 billion bill, up from $218 billion for the previous six-year period, also undermined a goal of assuring that by 2009 states will get back at least 95 cents for every $1 they contribute to the highway trust fund.
Some of the larger and faster-growing states, including California, Texas and Florida, have long complained that they don’t get back what they pay into the fund.