Federal Funding

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) briefed reporters on the points of consensus reached by the four leaders of the Environment and Public Works Committee with regard to the transportation bill. In answer to a question by Streetsblog, she said that guaranteed federal funding for bike and pedestrian programs would be in the bill. She made it clear that bicycling and walking were important modes of transportation that deserve “good attention” in the bill.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives took a “symbolic” vote on raising the debt ceiling without any “strings attached” – i.e., the trillion dollars worth of spending cuts the Republicans are insisting on before they’ll agree to raise the debt ceiling.

Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, just addressed reporters about the progress of the transportation bill.

In an op-ed in Politico this morning, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica (R-FL) calls for getting rid of waste and inefficiencies in the transportation system, shifting more power to the states, and “doing more with less.”

Today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing held some good news for transit riders. Unintuitive though it may be, Banking has jurisdiction over public transportation in the Senate. While in the House, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee handles every aspect of the reauthorization, in the Senate the bill gets carved up. Environment and Public Works is taking the lead, with the specifics on transit left to Banking. Luckily, there are some transit champions on Banking: Jack Reed (D-RI), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) to name a few.

As the House and Senate get closer to unveiling their respective transportation proposals, it’s crunch time for figuring out how to pay for infrastructure investment moving forward. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who has let slip that he’s in favor of a two-year reauthorization because of current funding constraints, chaired a hearing in the Finance Committee today to examine options for financing. No one panacea emerged, and conservatives on the committee and among the witnesses quickly countered most of the suggestions raised.

According to Congressional insiders, members of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works are meeting today and tomorrow to hash out the details of their proposal for a multi-year transportation reauthorization bill. Hanging in the balance of these negotiations may be the federal government's only programs dedicated to funding infrastructure for biking and walking.

We knew it could happen, people! There had to be a better way to distribute federal dollars than Congressional earmarks. The FHWA just announced that 11 programs, funded at a combined $422 million, will be making discretionary grants for innovative projects. "These grants will support projects that work to improve safety, maintain a state of good repair, and make communities more livable," the FHWA statement said. The money for most of those 11 programs used to be consumed almost entirely by earmarks.

A few final notes before we all head home for the weekend...