Senate sends revised highway bill to House

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Tuesday to keep federal highway money flowing to the states into December but only after rejecting the House’s reliance on what lawmakers called a funding “gimmick” and moving to force a post-election debate on whether to raise gasoline taxes.

The House could accept the Senate’s changes or reject them and send the bill back to the Senate. Whichever outcome, a highway funding bill is still expected to clear Congress before lawmakers adjourn for the summer later this week.

The Senate took up a $10.8 billion bill the House passed last week that would have kept the federal Highway Trust Fund solvent through next May and voted 66-31 to strip out controversial funding provisions, leaving $8.1 billion.

That’s enough to keep programs going only through Dec. 19. The amendment’s sponsors – Democrats Tom Carper of Delaware and Barbara Boxer of California and Republican Bob Corker of Tennessee – said they want Congress to reach a long-term funding solution this year and they hope that will be easier after the November election when partisan tempers will presumably have cooled.

The vote on passage of the bill was 79-18.

Congress has shored up the trust fund four times since 2008. The current effort would be the fifth time, and lawmakers said they don’t want to do yet another short-term patch next year.

“I remain deeply concerned that if we kick this can into next year that the next Congress – like so many Congresses before it – will be unable to summon the courage necessary to write a long-term plan for our nation’s infrastructure,” Carper said.

The trust fund is in its current straits because the federal 18.4-cent-per-gallon gas tax and 24.4-cent-per-gallon diesel tax – the fund’s chief source of revenue – haven’t been increased in more than 20 years, while the cost of maintaining and expanding the nation’s aging infrastructure has gone up. The fuel-efficiency of cars and trucks is also increasing while people are driving less per capita.

One solution would be to raise fuel taxes, but lawmakers are reluctant to do that in an election year – especially Republicans for whom a vote in favor of any tax increase could trigger a backlash from their party’s base.

“I haven’t heard of a single person that doesn’t realize this issue has got to be dealt with, and the way we’ve been dealing with it is totally irresponsible,” said Corker, who has bucked his party by introducing a bill to raise the gas tax.

Corker and Carper have offered separate proposals to raise the fuel taxes.