Photo: MPR

He said the history of the committee – and his service to it – has been “the movement of people safely, efficiently, and effectively, for the betterment of the nation.”

He also imparted some final nuggets of wisdom for those who will follow him on the committee:

• Earmarks. Oberstar said a bill “devoid of the 27,000 earmarks like we had in 2006” would be a good thing. “That’s excess,” he said. But, he said, it was too simplistic to shut legislators out of the allocation process. “If you believe that, then the executive branch – at the national or state level – will make all those decisions.” He pointed to his own achievements in making the process more accountable and transparent.
• The reauthorization. He acknowledged that it was a “big hole in the legislative agenda.” He blamed the White House and the Senate for failing to come up with an agreement on a financing mechanism.
• An extension. He said that an answer on the length of the extension of the current authorization could come as early as tomorrow, when the newly elected House and Senate leadership meets. He even threw out the possibility that “if they come to some agreement, we could maybe even be doing a new authorization in the balance of this session. We’d be prepared to do that.” Assuming that won’t happen, however, he spoke strongly against doing short, month-to-month extensions as a forcing mechanism to “hold somebody’s feet to the fire.” He said that was not reasonable. He said if it wasn’t going to be a six-year bill, they should extend it for a year.
• John Mica. Oberstar spoke with fondness of the “close working relationship” he had with his ranking member and the accomplishments they’ve shared. “That’s a record, I submit, of cooperation, conciliation, that is taking the best of Mr. Mica’s ideas, the best of my ideas, what we can sell to our respective caucuses, and putting it together in a bill.” He says he hopes Mica can rebuild those structural relationships in the next Congress.
• The new class. He acknowledged the conservatism of the new freshmen and their inexperience with policy issues. “You’ll see, coming in, a lack of institutional understanding and also, it appears, a lack of willingness to follow seasoned leaders,” he said. He worries that the new members “little appetite or appreciation for the broader policy questions the nation faces on transportation.”
• High speed rail. He cheered Ray LaHood’s decision that states have to “use it or lose it” when it comes to high speed rail dollars. “If the new governor of Wisconsin wants to build highways instead of high speed rail, increase your gas tax in Wisconsin,” he said. “Stop complaining and whining about wanting to build highways with rail dollars. Build highways with highway dollars.”
• A glass of rosé. He spoke at length – and in French! – about his recent experience riding the trains in France. He was impressed that you could travel the distance between Boston and Washington in 2 ½ hours, and that “you could put a glass of rosé on the table and it didn’t flutter. You could write notes and your pen didn’t quaver. It was interesting to come back to a third world country.”
• Gas tax. Financing is the “Gordian knot” of the surface transportation authorization, Oberstar said. He wishes the president would have taken his advice – and that of two national commissions – and increased the gas tax or user fees. “We’d have had a bill; it’d be law; we’d be moving ahead.” Recalling Europe again, he says high gas taxes are paying for a $1.3 trillion, 20 year infrastructure investment program. “We’re just sitting on the sidelines while they’re eating our lunch.”
• The looming highway trust fund crisis. Oberstar rejected the idea of passing a “barebones” reauthorization that didn’t adequately inject more money into the highway trust fund. He said it’s “on course to being $16 billion to $18 billion short of the authorization level” because of raiding to pay for disaster relief. He said states are now drawing down revenues more slowly than during stimulus because they’re now working on longer-term projects with a longer “spend-out time.” By his calculation, the chickens will come home to roost “sometime in July.”
• His successor. He wouldn’t speculate or opine on whether Nick Rahall or Peter DeFazio would – or should – be the next ranking member.
• His plans for the future. “You will not see my name on any lobbying firm,” he pledged. He said he remains committed to working on transportation policy, especially safety, as well as “the new rural view of America and the new urbanism.”

Oberstar gives his farewell speech. Photo: MPR

He said he wouldn’t change or take back any of his votes for transportation, especially improvements in his own district. He refused to apologize for the stimulus, saying the infrastructure it paid for will be there for a hundred years.

Meanwhile, John Mica, the top Republican on the Transportation Committee – and its presumptive next chair – said in a statement:

If selected by my peers to chair the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in the next Congress, my primary focus will be improving employment and expanding economic opportunities, doing more with less, cutting red tape and removing impediments to creating jobs, speeding up the process by which infrastructure projects are approved, and freeing up any infrastructure funding that’s been sitting idle.

Among my top legislative priorities will be passing a long-term federal highways and transit reauthorization… I will also focus on major initiatives to find ways within the Committee’s jurisdiction to save taxpayer dollars. That includes better management and utilization of federal assets, including real property, and more efficient, cost effective passenger rail transportation, including a better directed high-speed rail program.

Some reformers saw visions of high speed rail go down the toilet with the flip in Congressional power. Mica seems to indicate otherwise. Certainly, he’ll be under pressure from his party – which reads yesterday’s victory as a mandate for smaller government – to cut spending. But Mica supported Oberstar’s $500 billion transportation bill, and he recognizes the benefits of transit. He’ll need solid backup from advocates — speaking with a fiscal-conservative message — to convince his colleagues that infrastructure investment makes economic sense.

It looks like he’s prepared to try.

(Photo: Pop and Politics)

Oberstar’s
proposal would plug the hole in anticipated highway trust fund revenue
for the next transport bill with top-rated Treasury debt securities.
Those bonds, the Minnesotan explained on Friday, would "be repaid with
revenues from the highway trust fund out into the future. And we would delay the repayment for the first perhaps four years, giving the economy time to recover."

In
order to repay the Treasury for its up-front bond issue, Congress would
ultimately need to raise the gas tax — a step lawmakers have been
unwilling to take since 1993, and one that the White House has ruled
out for the time being.

"The idea of waiting three or
four years for the economy to recover would be an appealing part of"
the idea, Iowa state DOT chief Nancy Richardson told Oberstar when he
sought her reaction to the plan at a Friday House hearing. "[That]
would allow it to appeal to some of the dissenters in
terms of increasing funding."

Delaying for
three or four years, however, also would assume that future Congresses
would be more open to voting on a gas-tax hike that few lawmakers are
eager to debate, even in rosy economic times. The evidence of success
for such kick-the-can-down-the-road moves is few and far between: both
parties, for example, have habitually voted to postpone previously scheduled cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors rather than fix the long-term formula.

In addition, the growing production boom in semi- and fully electric cars casts doubt
on the gas tax’s ability to raise sustainable revenue for
transportation going forward. Depending on how popular highly
fuel-efficient cars become by the time Congress considers a future gas
tax change, the cents-per-gallon increase needed to repay the Treasury
may be much higher than any current predictions.

The gas-tax bonding plan has a third potential hiccup.

Oberstar suggested that $130 billion in Treasury bonds would be sufficient to close the gap between the cost of his six-year transport bill
and anticipated gas-tax revenue. Yet that total would not appear to
cover the estimated $50 billion that Oberstar’s legislation would set
aside for high-speed rail.

Securing sufficient votes from
fiscally conservative Democrats and Senate Republicans for deficit
spending on high-speed rail would be difficult on its own, and adding
the bonding proposal could add complications.

Oberstar
spokesman Jim Berard cautioned that the bonding idea is among several
"proposals that have been floating around" for financing a new
transport bill, adding: "There isn’t a magic bullet out there that
seems to have captured everybody’s imagination. So we don’t want to get
too far out in front of this thing because we don’t want to give the
impression that we’ve found the answer."

Oberstar (center) joined New York City transport chief Janette Sadik-Khan (right) at today's event. (Photo: B.Clements, Finance & Commerce)

Oberstar appeared at an event marking Minneapolis' move to join the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), founded 14 years ago by then-New York City Transportation Commissioner Elliot Sander to counterbalance the influence of state DOTs'  voice in D.C., the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Oberstar's specific remarks on transit operating aid were unavailable as of press time. But transport committee spokesman Jim Berard said the Minnesotan supported "in principle" the conept of allowing transit agencies from areas with populations greater than 200,000 to use their federal transportation formula grants on operating expenses.

Under current law, urban transit agencies are restricted to spending federal formula money on capital expenses, such as purchasing new rail cars or paying salaries for bus drivers.

Congress agreed last year to give transit officials the freedom to redirect 10 percent of their federal stimulus aid to operating budgets, underscoring that the change was a temporary response to the recession.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the transit industry's chief lobbying group for more than a century, has opposed the use of formula grants for transit operating, preferring that already-scarce highway trust fund dollars be reserved for capital spending on rail and buses. APTA did not return a request for comment by press time on the growing support for changing the existing rules governing transit operating funds.

It's worth noting that the change Oberstar and LaHood have endorsed would not come until lawmakers take up a new long-term federal transportation bill, which may not occur until next year. Also left undetermined is the share of formula funds that would be made available for transit operating costs if the proposal becomes law; legislation offered by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) would okay the use of between 30 percent and one-half of federal formula grants.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (Photo: LV City Life)

House
transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) had added
language to the three-month aviation measure redistributing the $932
million based on existing highway funding formulas — rather than
giving 58 percent of the money to four states by extending project
earmarks, as would occur under the jobs bill that President Obama signed 10 days ago.

Oberstar’s proposed fix also would amend
language in that jobs bill that disproportionately under-funded seven
federal transportation programs, including Safe Routes to School, Metropolitan Planning, and Recreational Trails.

Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had vowed to the House chairman that
upper chamber would approve his fix as part of a future jobs bill, but
objections from several senators prevented it from hitching a ride on
the aviation bill.

CQ identified one of the objecting senators in its story on the issue (sub. req’d.):

An
aide to Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., one of the
senators who whose state stands to lose under the Oberstar formulation,
said he was one of "a dozen or so" senators who had concerns.

"The last 11 FAA bills we’ve passed were clean, and a number
of members objected to adding a controversial highway change to that
bill," the aide said. "It’s an issue that needs to be addressed, but
this FAA [bill] simply wasn’t the place."

Republicans preferred Oberstar’s solution, in part because their states by and large would do better under his plan.

The sizable contingent of lawmakers backing Oberstar’s changes will get
their next shot at winning Senate passage in two weeks, after Congress
returns from its Easter recess. For more information on which states
would gain or lose in the reallocation of the $932 million, see this post from Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Fixing a disputed provision in the jobs bill that President Obama signed into law yesterday -- as Senate Democratic leaders promised House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) following complaints by several members of his panel -- would involve the redistribution of $932 million in funding for two major federal road and rail programs.

The end result of the transfers would leave California with $192 million less than it had in the Senate-passed version of the jobs measure, while Texas would gain the most with an influx of more than $76 million, according to data released by Oberstar's committee earlier this week.

The $932 million in grants became an issue last month after the jobs bill, which extends the 2005 transportation law until 2011, cleared the Senate with language that also extended 2009-level earmarks for the two programs, known as Projects of Regional and National Significance (PRNS) and the National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement (NCIIP).

That extension of previous earmarks would result in 58 percent of the $932 million going to four states: Illinois, Louisiana, California, and Washington. After lawmakers from other states raised alarms about the distribution, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) vowed to Oberstar [PDF] that if the House would approve the jobs bill without changing the provision, the Senate would move as quickly as possible on a fix.

"Although my preference would be to amend this [jobs bill] to reflect these compromises today, any further delays in enacting a surface transportation extension are unacceptable," Oberstar said two weeks ago, urging colleagues to take the upper chamber at its word.

The House passed legislation earlier this week that would redirect the $932 million to all 50 states based on existing road-funding formulas. It is that shift that would take PRNS and NCIIP money from California, Illinois ($119 million), Louisiana ($43 million), and Washington ($39 million), as well as Oregon ($29 million) and Virginia ($12 million).

States that would gain under the fix include Texas, Ohio ($25 million), Florida ($47 million), Georgia ($31 million), and New York ($16 million). It remains unclear when the Senate will act on the change.

Senate environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), at right, with ranking Republican Jim Inhofe (OK). (Photo: Politico)

Boxer
described today’s hearing in her panel as "the kickoff" of the upper
chamber’s drafting of new legislation governing U.S. road, transit,
bridge, port, and rail policy. "Our intention is to hold a series of
hearings and write the bill while you are still here and while Senator [George] Voinovich [R-OH] is still here," she told Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), who will retire at the end of the year.

Such willingness to consider a new infrastructure bill before the Obama administration’s preferred timeframe
of next spring could help thaw the frosty relations between Boxer’s
panel and the House transportation committee, where chairman Jim
Oberstar (D-MN) has raged against upper-chamber inaction for months.

But
lawmakers and industry lobbies have a long way to go before they can
sing from the same hymnal on the next transportation bill. Boxer asked
representatives of the four lobbies appearing today — the American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the National Construction Alliance (NCA) and the Associated General Contractors (AGC) — to parse Oberstar’s bill "literally, with a pen" and let senators know which provisions they favored or disliked.

"We’re
going to take their bill and work from it," Boxer said of the House,
which has proposed a $500 billion plan that streamlines 108 categories
of formula-based federal transportation spending into four and includes
dedicated funding for metropolitan area priorities.

Neither
the transit industry nor transportation reform advocacy groups had a
representative at the hearing. The four witnesses largely limited their
comments to the economic need for a new long-term federal bill, with
former AASHTO president Pete Rahn endorsing the price tag of the House
bill but suggesting that he viewed it as overly solicitous to transit.

"We need a balanced bill that increases funding for
both highways and transit," said Rahn, who leads the Missouri state DOT.

And
though the biggest stumbling block facing the next federal transport
bill — namely, the lack of sufficient gas tax revenue to pay for it –
was lamented widely, few offered concrete solutions that would help
Congress move forward more quickly.

"The problem
we have in infrastructure is not ways to borrow more money," Rahn replied to a question about Build America Bonds, a successful if occasionally controversial infrastructure financing tool established in last year’s stimulus law. "We need to
find a way to pay for improvements … We’ve now topped out the credit card."

Rahn urged lawmakers to address the declining utility
of the gas tax, pointing to a "conflict" between its continued role as
Washington’s transportation revenue-raiser and the growing
acknowledgment that oil consumption needs to decrease for environmental
and national security reasons.

Griffith Company
president Tom Foss, speaking for the AGC, said that industry groups are
open to other options, such as increased tolling or an eventual
transition to a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax. Still, he added, "the
gas tax is still best way
to fund" federal transportation law because "we can advertise [it] to
the general population."

The hearing took place as the House prepares to vote
as soon as tomorrow on a $15 billion jobs bill, already cleared by the
Senate, that would extend the 2005 transport law until year’s end.
Boxer and fellow senators asked the witnesses to underscore the
importance of that 10-month extension in conversations with the House,
where some Democrats remain reluctant to embrace the upper chamber’s
jobs package.

Highways and transit, side by side in Berlin. (Photo: Streetsblog.net)

That
question brought House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar
(D-MN) to a small meeting room on Capitol Hill today as conservative
transit advocate Bill Lind engaged assistant transportation secretary Polly Trottenberg, Reconnecting America president John Robert Smith, and urban developer Chris Leinberger in a spirited debate.

Lind focused on the themes of Moving Minds,
a book he co-wrote with the late conservative icon Paul Weyrich to
debunk many of the anti-transit, pro-roads myths trotted out by Randal O’Toole, Wendell Cox, and other pundits on the right.

"The
way we got to America’s national motto being ‘drive or die’ … is not
because of any sort of free market," Lind said today. "We got here
because of massive government subsidization of one competitor and the taxing of another."

But
the dialogue got interesting when Oberstar arrived, a cast on his arm
after taking a spill on a sheet of ice. He shared an anecdote about
former French President Charles de Gaulle’s support for rail before
hitting a familiar note, one best described as respectfully critical of
the Obama administration.

"Political will
– that’s what we’re lacking today and have been lacking for a long
time," Oberstar said, urging fellow policymakers "to reinvest in a
system that moves great numbers of people at the lowest cost."

In
a direct communication to Trottenberg, the White House’s representative
in the room, he added that he stands ready to take up a new federal
transportation bill "whenever this administration can find its
political will to support a financing mechanism."

Trottenberg
took the floor next, acknowledging "frustration" on the part of U.S.
DOT staff as they seek to build political support for the difficult
choices needed to raise revenue for large-scale reform.

Particularly
in the Senate, she said, "a lot of members do the math [and conclude
that] ‘it’s valuable for me to fight for every single dollar to go to
highway funds’," regardless of the impact that choice would have on
their constituents’ future or the common good.

But the participants in today’s event appeared to agree that the message in Lind’s book, as well as the national revival
of streetcar projects, would help smooth over the polarization that has
come to characterize American transportation decision-making.

"There’s
a strong rural message in everything we’re saying," noted Smith, the
former Republican mayor of Meridian, Mississippi. "When gas gets to be
four dollars a gallon, our people have no other options."

(After
hearing Smith speak about the small-town potential of transit, Oberstar
extended a most congressional compliment: "Could you be on loan to our
committee? Or to the Senate …")

And Lind made perhaps
the most cogent argument in favor of abandoning transportation
dichotomies such as urban versus suburban. "The rural-urban split is
something that anti-transit forces try to exploit on the state
legislature level" to defeat transit funding proposals, he observed.

(Photo: WBEZ)

The very idea of measuring the immediate effects of transportation stimulus spending on joblessness is highly dubious, for two reasons underscored by the U.S. DOT's quickly blogged pushback to the AP story.

Firstly, for all the White House's talk of "shovel-readiness," the need to put transport projects out to bid, sign contracts, and hire workers means that stimulus dollars take some time to affect broader local economies. The latest congressional data shows that work has started on 57 percent, or $19.7 billion, of the stimulus law's $34.3 billion in road and transit funding.

Ironically, that ripple effect for transport spending could end up helping states, such as Florida, that were slow out of the gate in allocating stimulus money but continue to struggle with high unemployment.

Secondly (despite the best efforts of some senior Democrats) transportation only accounted for 6 percent of the stimulus' $787 billion in total spending. Why expect such a small slice of the legislation to have a major impact on unemployment rates? House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) and his top lieutenant, Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) today compared the AP's assumptions to "saying it is a waste of time to feed a homeless family because that one act does not cure poverty."

Also from Oberstar and DeFazio's rebuttal to the AP:

Furthermore, these statistics do not include indirect and induced jobs in the supply chain, such as positions that produce construction materials or manufacture equipment.  The impact of these jobs is not limited to a single state or local community.  For example, the Virginia Railway Express in Northern Virginia used Recovery Act funds to purchase 15 locomotives manufactured in Boise, Idaho.  VRE will begin receiving the new locomotives later this summer.  While this local decision creates jobs in Virginia, the impact is also felt in Idaho and throughout the country’s vast supply chain.  When you include these indirect and induced jobs, the Committee calculates that total employment from transportation investments under the Recovery Act reaches over 760,000. 

Perhaps the most curious of the AP reporters' rhetorical flourishes was this sentence:

Even within the construction industry, which stood to benefit most from transportation money, the AP's analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program.

It's true that the transportation represents a small sector of the broader construction industry. But that industry is dominated by home building, which is still coming down from an unprecedented bubble-bursting.

And expecting the industry as a whole to benefit from transport-specific spending that was funneled through state DOTs is rather like expecting the industry to benefit from more spending on military aircraft; after all, Boeing works on construction as well ...

Even transport reform advocates who found the stimulus bill something of a letdown emerged today to scratch their heads at the AP's work. Laura Barrett, executive director of the Transportation Equity Network, said in a statement:

In a perfect world, we could spend years constructing a perfectly efficient economic stimulus program. In the real world, people need jobs today. Most transportation jobs pay good wages and help build careers that lift families out of poverty. We need more transportation spending in the new jobs bill before Congress, not less — especially in the public transportation sector, which creates nearly twice as many jobs per dollar as road construction does, and helps protect our environment at the same time.

The
House is slated to vote as soon as tomorrow on a job-creation package
that includes $27.5 billion for highways and $8.4 billion for transit,
according to a transportation committee document obtained by
Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: Bike Portland via Flickr)

That
funding divide mirrors the spending levels in this winter’s economic
stimulus law, which disappointed transit advocates as well as transport
panel chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), who charged the Obama administration with diverting funding to make room for tax cuts.

Oberstar
"strongly supports" the new House legislation, however, according to a
committee e-mail sent this afternoon which notes that infrastructure
makes up half of the House’s $75 billion jobs bill.

The bill’s $37.3 billion in spending breaks down along the following lines:

Highways:       
$27.5 billion

Transit:           
$8.4 billion

Amtrak:          
$800 million

Airports:         
$500 million

Ship
Const.:     $100 million

Other:            
$11 billion

Total              
$37.3 billion

The $8.4 billion number for transit is less than the $9.7 billion in "ready-to-go" projects identified
by state DOTs, and slightly more than half the size of the $15 billion
in shovel-ready transit spending tallied by the American Public
Transportation Association.

Can transit advocates
successfully boost the bill’s spending levels? The legislation is
moving at lightning speed through the House, where a two-month
extension of the 2005 federal transportation bill is also expected to pass before the chamber adjourns for the holidays.

But
the process may slow in the Senate, where Democrats are still working
to finish a health care deal before January. Only after the health bill
passes are senators scheduled to turn to jobs legislation of their own.

Late Update:
Oberstar spokesman Jim Berard said in an interview that the new jobs
bill’s funding allocation is set "to be very similar to the stimulus
passed earlier this year. Highways and transit money will be handled
through formula grants like we always do, like we did in the Recovery
Act."

That likely means that mayors’ hopes
of getting more local urban input into transportation spending will be
put off until another day, with state DOTs disbursing the lion’s share
of job-creation money. Additionally, talk of more merit-based
infrastructure investment through an expansion of the stimulus law’s
competitive TIGER grant program appears to have fallen by the wayside
as Congress hustles towards adjournment.

Oberstar commented on the new transportation spending during a Capitol press conference this afternoon:

Without this investment,
the Highway Trust Fund will decline, states will not be able to provide their
20 percent match, and we’ll have a regression.  The House acting on this
now assures that states programs will be fully funded, Highway Trust Fund
revenues will be invested, the sustainability of job creation will go
forward, and we will be gaining jobs rather than losing jobs because of what
the House will do in this recovery program.

With the U.S. unemployment rate hitting 10.2 percent today, its highest level in 26 years, a palpable shift is occurring on Capitol Hill.

House transportation chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: STLToday)

For weeks, we’ve heard senior Democrats and the transit industry
make the case for more transportation spending as a potent job creator,
but the lack of funding for a full six-year bill has kept the
conversation stalled.

But two things have happened in the week since Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) floated the idea of a "front-loaded" infrastructure plan that would concentrate investment in the first two years:

• The defeat of two Democratic candidates in Tuesday’s off-year elections reinforced that job creation and economic worries are the No. 1 concerns for voters.
• Gross domestic product may be rebounding, but unemployment decidedly is not.

This
adds up to renewed interest in fast-tracking a new transportation bill,
perhaps with a two-year window. As House transport committee chairman
Jim Oberstar (D-MN) told David Rogers of Politico, "The concrete is cracking."

But even if the White House is prepared to abandon its insistence
on an 18-month extension of current law, how to pay for new
transportation legislation remains a very open question. House Majority
Whip James Clyburn (D-SC), for his part, told Rogers that he likes the
sound of Rep. Pete DeFazio’s (D-OR) proposed tax on Wall Street oil speculators:

There
are some painless ways to fund the highway bill. Transaction taxes,
that’s a painless way … Where are the shared contributions to all
this? If you’re sitting
there on Wall Street, if you’re Goldman Sachs, if you’re making all
this money, if you got all this federal money [in a] bailout, and you
are paying all these big bonuses to your folks, where is your
contribution to this recovery? That’s why it’s painless.

Clyburn’s reference to the "highway" bill brings up another lingering
mystery about the type of transportation spending being envisioned by
senior Democrats. If the White House does agree to support a new
infrastructure bill after health care is finished, will it include
policy changes or just new money?

Because, as Clyburn inadvertently acknowledges, simply adding more money to the framework of the 2005 infrastructure law
would help highways but do little to move the nation towards a more
rational mix of transit and roads. Oberstar’s pending six-year bill, by
contrast, would institute an array of reforms, cutting 75 funding categories from the current system and allowing more "flex-ing" of road money for use on transit.

If
a front-loaded bill is passed with some of the policy changes offered
by Oberstar, job creation and a more accountable national
transportation system could start moving hand-in-hand. If a
front-loaded bill is passed but scrubbed of any substantive reform,
jobs may be created but voters will still be sitting in traffic.

Late Update:
House Republicans are making noise about using unspent money from this
winter’s economic stimulus law to bolster infrastructure projects,
which comprised just 6 percent of the stimulus’ $787 billion price tag. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said at a press conference today:

And so I’d like to see us go to the back end of where the
stimulus is going, to be inflating more government programs … scrape that
money out and put it into infrastructure, which we know [is] the job
creator.

The concept of tapping the stimulus is one that Republicans have floated for months, including in legislative form
when the nation’s highway trust fund was nearing insolvency over the
summer. The problem, then as now, is that senior Democrats such as
House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) are staunchly
opposed to diverting funds from the massive recovery bill.

Later Update:
Politico’s article cites Oberstar as arguing for "an upfront investment
of $80 billion over two years" in transportation. But it’s worth noting
that the transportation chairman has not formally endorsed that figure,
according to his office.

Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: Capitol Chatter)

The tourists may well have been speaking for most senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill, where this week’s growing momentum
towards a six-month timetable for taking up the next long-term
infrastructure bill was abruptly squelched by GOP senators’ inability
to find consensus among their members.

As the subscription-only CQ reported today:

Efforts in the Senate
to take up a six-month extension of surface transportation law this
week appear dead, over objections by a few Republicans to passing it
without a full debate, said James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking
Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

… Inhofe said Tuesday that at least two Republicans objected
and that there is not enough floor time to finish a bill this week under
normal procedure. 

The Senate’s lack of progress means that officials working on the
nation’s transit, roads, bridges, and bike paths will likely have to
continue operating under a second short-term extension of the 2005 transportation law, this time lasting until December 18.

Despite
the prospects of continuing uncertainty on the local level, House
transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) remained upbeat
and focused on a singular goal: getting his colleagues to elevate
infrastructure to the top-of-mind status currently occupied by health
care (followed by financial regulation and climate change).

"Encircle
the White House," Oberstar advised the organizers of today’s rally, who
parked heavy-duty construction equipment along the sidewalk to
symbolize their plea for more transportation spending. "Encircle the
Senate!"

The economic stimulus law’s $48 billion in transport
aid, $8.4 billion of which went to transit, "will dry up" by spring of
next year, Oberstar added. He threw in a jab at Obama administration
officials who insisted on cutting stimulus transit spending to pay for tax cuts: "I don’t know of anybody who’s thanked me for their $250 tax credit … God only knows what’s happened to it."

Speaking to reporters after the rally, Oberstar said that extending
the 2005 transportation law until the holidays "will give us time
between now and Christmas to agree on a six-year bill."

But the Minnesotan’s push for taking up his $450 billion proposal
by year’s end has yet to be met with any enthusiasm from the White
House and senior Senate Democrats, who until recently had aligned with
Obama aides in favor of an 18-month delay.

And
even if the Senate had won passage of its six-month extension, Oberstar
said he would have raised concerns about the measure in the House,
citing several "serious problems." One example, according to Oberstar:
the Senate’s plan would have shifted the current grant program for significant projects — which helps fund some transit work — back to the states, potentially jeopardizing the money.

For
the moment, long-term transportation policy appears to have become the
proverbial tree falling in the forest, with few in the capital taking
note as the federal bill languishes and climate legislation climbs
higher on the agenda.

The Transportation Secretary and the president have a stalemate on their hands. (Photo: NYT)

In one corner:
House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN), who has
enlisted most of his colleagues in the lower chamber in a push to pass
new legislation replacing the outmoded 2005 infrastructure bill — "a paean to the individual motorist," as Wired put it today.

But Oberstar’s enthusiasm has not yet been met with action by the panel he needs most, the Ways and Means Committee.

Why
is Ways and Means so important? The panel controls the funding source
for transportation legislation, and chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) has
yet to see enthusiasm for his colleagues for making tough choices about
raising revenue for infrastructure. Rangel told CQ this week:

Everyone is
excited about a robust transportation bill. The enthusiasm
is out there. We have not concluded that everyone
is willing to pay for it and call it an emergency. 

Oberstar has done his part to rally the troops, publishing an op-ed
in The Hill today that laments the "lack of political will" to tend to
the nation’s aging infrastructure, but little progress can be made
until Ways and Means shows an appetite for diving into the funding
question.

How much needs to be raised to pay for a new
bill? There is an estimated $140 billion gap between expected grosses
for the nation’s highway trust fund, which pays for federal spending on
transit as well as roads, and the investments envisioned in Oberstar’s $450 billion measure.

That
gap could be closed by a 10-cent per-gallon increase in the gas tax or
by other means, though the former has pitfalls both political
(Democrats have not worked on a counter-message to GOP pummeling on the issue) and practical (as Americans drive less in more efficient cars, the tax’s value is waning).

In
response to the dilemma, both parties have gotten creative. Rep. John
Larson (CT), a Ways and Means member who also chairs the House
Democratic caucus, has proposed taking unused money from the
government’s financial bailout for transportation. Rep. Aaron Schock
(R-IL) spoke for a sizable group in his party today by suggesting that unused cash from the stimulus law go to infrastructure.

But
both of those concepts would be little more than Band-Aids, given that
congressional budget writers must rely on a steady source of funding
when setting the "baseline" that governs the price tag of future
federal transport bills. If the bailout or the stimulus were tapped
this year, when the next long-term bill rolls around, the baseline
would likely be low enough to cause serious havoc.

On the whole, the gas tax remains the only funding source that has attracted serious consideration, most recently
from the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. The Obama administration,
however, remains flatly opposed to an increase during the current
recession. Speaking of the administration …

In the other corner: Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood, who back in June called for an 18-month delay in
taking up a new infrastructure plan. The rationale for such a
postponement is twofold; it would provide time for the economy to
recover, possibly creating political space for a gas tax increase, and
it would allow the new Obama team to get its sea legs in anticipation
of a policy reform fight that’s likely to be intense.

LaHood has key Senate Democrats on his side, including environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA), but not every member of the upper chamber of Congress is convinced of the wisdom of an 18-month delay. Still, LaHood continues to state that
while he and the president share Oberstar’s goals, there is no
possibility of the administration budging on its 18-month extension.

Where
does Washington, not to mention a nation full of roads, transit, and
trail users, go from here? As talk of a possible "second stimulus"
heats up on the Hill, some lawmakers are urging an extra shot of infrastructure spending to help boost flagging employment.

Oberstar
has long contended that his transportation bill would effectively act
as that "second stimulus," but he told CQ this week that he would be
disinclined to accept an 18-month extension of the 2005 legislation
that included more money but kept the same U.S. DOT policies in place.

Yet
Oberstar spokesman Jim Berard said in an interview that the chairman
would be opposed to a transportation-centric stimulus only if it were
treated as a substitute or placeholder for a long-term bill, thus
leaving the door open for infrastructure to remain in the mix as
Congress weighs new economic recovery plans.

As for the timeline for crafting future national transportation policy … it remains as cloudy as ever.

"It’s
obvious that we’re running out of September," Oberstar spokesman Jim
Berard told Streetsblog Capitol Hill, noting that lawmakers have become
caught up by legislative battles over health care and climate change.

"We’re at a point where a decision has to be made: it’s either to extend for a short time or have the
whole system collapse," Berard added. "Under those circumstances of two
bad choices," Oberstar is prepared to back a short-term extension
rather than letting the 2005 federal transport bill expire at the end
of the month.

A three-month delay, endorsed last week
by Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) would punt decision-making on
transportation reform until just after New Year’s. Even then,
revenue-raisers on the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate
Finance Committee are still likely to face considerable obstacles in paying for Oberstar’s six-year, $500 billion legislation.

Berard
acknowledged that the extension would have to be negotiated with House
leaders as well as the White House and the Senate, both of which have
already come out in favor of an 18-month delay. "We may, as early as
next week, introduce a bill and start the process," he said.

That bill would be a "clean" extension," in Capitol parlance — omitting data collection money and other small-scale reforms that the Obama administration has proposed.

House transport committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) (Photo: Capitol Chatter)

Unfortunately, the administration and some in the Senate have suggested
an 18-month extension of the existing surface transportation programs.
This approach does little more than delay the critical reforms and
difficult choices that must be made now.

Under this approach, come March 31, 2011, we would find ourselves faced
with the same decisions, the same outdated and inefficient programs and
even more costly investment needs in all modes of our transportation
system. Moreover, given that the new deadline would come at the outset
of a new Congress, additional extensions are inevitable.

Worst of all, failure to pass a long-term surface transportation
authorization on time would bring significant uncertainty to states and
MPOs that must plan critical projects years in advance. They require
long-term funding assurances and stability from their federal partners
to proceed in this process.

Oberstar’s
commentary is strongly worded, but it stops short of vowing to stand in
the way of a shorter-term delay in taking up a new federal
transportation bill — an outcome that appears all but certain given
the 10 legislative days remaining until current law expires on
September 30.

"Delay for the sake of delay is
unacceptable," Oberstar concludes in the op-ed. That framing opens the
door, if slightly, to a compromise on a delay that would give Congress’
revenue-raising committees (Senate Finance and House Ways and Means)
more time to devise a stable funding source for the bill.

Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), Oberstar’s chief subcommittee chairman, told The Hill on Friday
that he hoped to see a three-month extension, which would put off work
on a new bill until just after New Year’s. Others in the capital
believe a 12-month extension, as proposed by Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), would have a stronger chance of success.

But
DeFazio reiterated that Oberstar has yet to weigh in with his preferred
timeframe. In the meantime, the chairman is getting backup from a broad
array of transportation interest groups that operate under the aegis of
the Freight Stakeholders Coalition.

The
Coalition held a press conference this morning to reiterate its support
for passage of a new long-term infrastructure bill this year. The
American Public Transportation Association (APTA) was absent from the
lineup, but representatives of the highway, rail, trucking, and port
lobbies were in attendance, as was the Association of Metropolitan
Planning Organizations.

(Image: ARTBA)

Referencing lawmakers' reluctance to debate new funding sources for federal infrastructure investment, ARTBA suggested telling Congress to "make generating sufficient revenue for a $450 billion bill a priority."

That price tag matches the legislation released by House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) in June, which is headed for consideration by the full panel after Congress returns from its recess. Getting through to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, as ARTBA mentions, is a crucial step for Oberstar allies; if that panel does not put forth recommendations on how to pay for the bill, the transport measure could stall before reaching the full House.

While ARTBA and Oberstar are aligned on the timeframe for proceeding with a new transportation bill, the construction group is not on board with all of the chairman's priorities. ARTBA opposes giving state and local governments the ability to "flex" highway funds into transit projects that are better suited for their needs.

ARTBA's transit policy also states that the 80-20 distribution of federal gas tax revenues to highway and transit projects "sets a fair modal balance which should be maintained." Oberstar's new legislation alters that balance only slightly, creating an estimated 78-22 split between highways and transit, respectively.

The construction industry isn't the only transportation player working on grassroots lobbying during the congressional recess. The pro-transit Transportation for America (T4A) is fanning out to contact lawmakers through its member groups and plans bulletins of its own in the coming days, spokesman David Goldberg said in an interview.

As for where T4A stands on the timing for a long-term transport bill, Goldberg added:

We want to pass a bill that contains the important, major reforms, and if it takes a few more weeks or months, we should take the time. What we don't want to see is a long delay where this falls off the radar. If there's going to be reform, we have to keep the conversation going.

FTA’s Peter Rogoff (in hard hat) heard strong words from Rep. Oberstar today. (Photo: WP)

After
U.S. DOT deputy secretary John Porcari and Federal Transit
Administrator Peter Rogoff delivered laudatory remarks about the Moving Cooler
report, a joint project of government agencies and environmental
groups, Oberstar took the stage with pointed words for the two senior
officials.

"They need to … catch up with the House" on transportation
policy-making, Oberstar said of Porcari and Rogoff, who were sitting
within spitting distance of the chairman.

"If you don’t
pass our bill, you’re not going to get a head start on these
strategies" for reducing the carbon footprint of the transportation
sector, Oberstar told the White House aides.

He added: "The president gets it — the crowd around him doesn’t."

The
White House continues to press for an 18-month postponement of the next
long-term transportation bill, which Oberstar asserts could drag reform
past the two-year mark and continue an inequitable system that favors
new highway construction over transit. 

"When highway
planners sit down to build a roadway," Oberstar said today, "they don’t
go through the gymnastics of a cost-effectiveness index," as transit
planners are currently required to do. "They sit down, get the money,
and build a road."

Expanding transit, the House chairman concluded, is difficult "if you’ve got a millstone around your neck."

Yet
the House bill has a millstone of its own obstructing movement: the
lack of revenue to fund a doubling in new transit investment and other
Oberstar priorities. As Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) acknowledged this
morning, hiking the federal gas tax — which has remained at 18.4 cents
per gallon since 1993 — will not be feasible until the recession
dissipates.

"We are going to raise gas and diesel taxes
sometime in the next decade," Blumenauer said, but "not while the
economy is in freefall."

The new House transportation bill brings good news for local transit agencies. (Photo: Wired)

The most common phrase in the bill may well be three innocuous words: "to be supplied." This is in no small part thanks to the uncertain future of funding for Oberstar's $450 billion plan, a problem compounded by a White House preoccupied with health care and in no mood to raise the gas tax.

Still, the sheer number of sections left "to be supplied" in the legislation makes it difficult to consider individual portions of the bill in the context of the nation's overall transportation investment.

For example, the section on performance targets for states receiving federal money to keep roads and bridges in good repair -- as opposed to building new projects -- leaves its minimum standards for structural adequacy blank.

The section that creates a program for the unique transportation needs of metropolitan areas has no blank areas, but it leaves major decisions in the hands of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and state DOTs.

The secretary is asked to look at certain performance areas when deciding on new projects, including traffic reduction, road safety, less dependence on single-vehicle trips, and access to public transit. But the task of setting actual goals in those areas, such as percentage-based reduction in local per-capita VMT, is left up to the state DOTs and local metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to decide alongside the federal government.

The tangible targets proposed by Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO), which include accountability measures that cannot be tweaked by individual states and localities, are nowhere to be found.

Colin Peppard, climate and infrastructure policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, hailed the bill today for tying transportation decision-making to carbon emissions reductions. Yet Peppard closed on a caveat that is related to the bill's open-ended approach to transportation performance:

However, more work needs to be done to ensure that these forward-thinking goals are fully supported by the policies, programs, and funding laid out in this critical piece of legislation.  Questions remain as to whether state and local governments will truly be held accountable for delivering better transportation, economic, and environmental performance. 

David Goldberg, spokesman for the Transportation for America coalition, also praised Oberstar's outline of the bill for making a significant break from the status quo. He noted its dedication of funds to metropolitan areas, provisions aimed at combating climate change and its proposal for proportional voting at MPOs.

Goldberg added, however, that "there are too many places in the bill where localities and states are allowed to set their own performance measures and there is no overarching set of performance targets that would let you know the overall transportation program is making progress on issues of national priority."

The bill does take action on an issue of importance to many city governments: allowing local transit agencies to spend federal money on operating costs. Urban areas with populations between 200,000 and 500,000 would be cleared to spend 20 percent of their federal formula grants on transit operating, with the number shrinking to 10 percent for larger cities and 5 percent for cities with populations greater than 1 million.

How often does this man hold a shovel? (Photo: World Economic Forum via flickr)

Rep.
Jim Oberstar (D-MN), the transportation panel’s chairman, described a
delay in long-term funding as a risk to jobs and growth opportunities
that were created by the recent stimulus law.

And Oberstar made no attempt to hide his disdain for
the Obama economic advisers who helped trim transit’s share of that
stimulus plan. Holding up a red shovel for a phalanx of photographers,
Oberstar quipped: "There are folks in the economic gang at the White
House who never had a shovel in their hands or a callus on their
fingers."

His GOP counterpart on the committee, Rep. John
Mica (FL), vowed to join Oberstar in amassing House support for a
transporation bill that could clear the lower chamber of Congress by
the end of September — though even their allies concede that Senate
passage is a long shot.

"I view this as the most critical
jobs bill before Congress … we’re going to do it together, one way or
another, come hell or high water," Mica said, adding flourish as he
advised critics not to "underestimate Oberstar and Mica."

Several
advocacy and interest groups are joining the committee’s effort to push
a six-year transportation bill across the finish line. The Laborers’
International Union of North America released a statement that plainly
said, "We agree with Chairman Oberstar that the surface transportation
bill should not be delayed."

The American Public
Transportation Association (APTA), which represents the nation’s
transit agencies, also lent its voice in support. "Our members need
this bill to pass as soon as it possibly can," APTA President William
Millar told Streetsblog.

Yet the key for Oberstar and Mica
may be how many senators endorse their call for a long-term
transportation re-write this year. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood already has admitted
that the "reform" he called for as part of his 18-month extension would
have a slim chance of passing, given the contentious debate that’s
likely to erupt simply over averting bankruptcy for the nation’s
highway trust fund.

"I believe
we can have discussions," LaHood told Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA),
chairwoman of the panel with jurisdiction over DOT spending, earlier
this morning. "Whether we get to the point where we
can include these as part of the fix of the the Highway Trust Fund,
we’ll have to see."

Rep.
Pete DeFazio (D-OR), chairman of Oberstar’s subcommittee on highways
and transit, told Streetsblog that he hopes senators will "have second
thoughts" about the administration’s 18-month extension. "When we met
with the Senate, we agreed to their principles. We told them we’d give
them a product," he said.

Before the assembled media,
DeFazio was cutting in his criticism of the White House’s
transportation strategy. "The Obama administration has lifted a play
out of the Bush White House book," he said, predicting that the
extensions would last longer than LaHood’s proposed 18 months.

"Now
the administration of change has come and said, ‘We think the status
quo is just fine’ … it’s at least two years, more likely three or
four," DeFazio said.

The House Ways and Means Committee will
have a joint hearing next week on funding sources for Oberstar’s bill,
and DeFazio’s subcommittee plans to hold a markp Wednesday.

What
remains to be seen is whether senators will join the push — and
whether advocates will give full-throated support to the House members
in their clash with the administration.

When a reporter described as "not much," the new bill’s minor shift in the long-standing 80-20 funding distribution between highways and transit, a Democratic committee source conceded the point.

Rep. Jim Oberstar, the House transportation committee chairman is set to brief reporters this afternoon on his $450 billion, six-year federal transportation bill -- which he plans to pursue regardless of the Obama administration's push for an 18-month extension of existing law.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) has a brewing battle with the administration on his hands. (Photo: Jonathan Maus)

But Oberstar's early outline of the bill, which could get a vote in the committee as soon as next week, is already available. And it suggests that the Minnesota Democrat and Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR) have made good on their promises for a sweeping re-organization of the often debilitating federal transportation bureaucracy. Here are the highlights:

• The $450 billion price tag, which represents a 57 percent increase over the $286.5 billion bill approved in 2005, includes $87 billion in highway trust fund money for transit and $12 billion in transit cash from the Treasury's general fund. The 2005 bill gave transit less than $44 billion in highway trust fund money and $9 billion from the general fund.

• Oberstar isn't about to quietly accept Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's admonition that the 18-month extension is necessary to "face reality." In fact, the committee's outline of its bill warns that an extension could be devastating to state DOTs that have "been unwilling to invest in large, long-term projects until enactment of the reauthorization act."

• Highway funding would be consolidated into four funding categories, as would transit -- effectively eliminating 75 funding categories from the current system.
  
• Oberstar's bill would establish the National Infrastructure Bank proposed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and other senior lawmakers, making the bank part of a broader metropolitan access program that would support urban areas in achieving "improved transit operations, congestion pricing, and expanded highway and transit capacity."

And that's not all. More details of the forthcoming House bill follow after the jump.

Oberstar also appears poised to support "complete streets" principles in his bill, although his outline uses the phrase "comprehensive street design principles." The forthcoming House bill would also ask the Environmental Protection Agency to set national emissions reductions targets for the transportation sector, thus requiring state and local official to keep climate change in mind when planning future projects.

Oberstar's outline also attaches a number to the transportation funding gap that would result if existing law were relied on. Extending the 2005 federal bill for the next six years would result in $326 billion in funding, according to the House transportation committee -- about $125 billion less than the new bill Oberstar wants.

Of course, the missing piece is how to pay for that increased infrastructure investment. The revenue puzzle falls under the jurisdiction of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, however, meaning that Oberstar's will to fight LaHood on an extension may come down to how many allies the transportation chairman can find outside of his own committee.