Senate ready to pass roads, transit overhaul

WASHINGTON – In a rare display of deal-making between Republicans and Democrats in a bitterly partisan election year, the Senate was poised to pass an overhaul of highway and transit programs that would give states more flexibility in how they spend federal money and would step up the pace of road construction by shortening environmental reviews.

Even the measure’s sponsors – California Democrat Barbara Boxer and Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe – come from opposite political poles. A vote on the bill is set for today.

“We are hopeful this will become a template for all of us in the Senate and the House to find the sweet spot where we can work together,” Boxer said Tuesday during floor debate on the measure. She said the Senate’s bipartisan success should be a lesson for House Republican leaders, whose efforts to pass their own bill without concessions to Democrats have fallen apart.

The Senate marched through more than a dozen amendments, approving proposals to deny federal aid to privatized highways and to loosen safety regulation of agricultural trucks. A series of energy-related proposals were batted aside.

The bill would spend $109 billion over less than two years. That’s far below the level of spending that two congressional commissions have said will be needed if the U.S. is to maintain its aging roads and bridges and bus and train systems and expand the national transportation network to meet population growth between now and 2050. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has described the nation’s roads as “one big pothole.”