Transportation and FAA Reauthorization Update

With Congress returning next week for the second session of the 112th Congress, two major infrastructure authorization bills are in position to move through the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Current extensions of authorizations covering the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Federal highways and transit programs expire in the first quarter of 2012, with the FAA expiring on January 31 and highways and transit on March 31. The FAA authorization, currently on its 22nd extension, must be dealt with first and is closer to completion than the highway and transit bill.  In the first session of the 112th Congress, both the House and Senate passed respective FAA authorization bills.  Negotiations continue between the House and Senate with only a handful of outstanding issues yet to be agreed on.  The most contentious of those issues is a House provision overturning a National Mediation Board ruling on how to count votes in airline union formation elections.  Even if an agreement can be reached on the outstanding items, it is likely that another short-term extension of FAA funding will still be needed to prevent another shutdown.  AGC will continue to monitor the negotiations and push to avoid another shutdown of the FAA. Reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs is the closest it has been to moving forward in both the House and Senate since the current authorization (SAFETEA-LU) expired on Sep. 30, 2009, but still faces obstacles in each chamber. In the Senate, the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee passed a bipartisan two-year authorization of federal highway spending on Nov. 9 and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed the their safety portion of the reauthorization on Dec. 14.  The committees who have yet to act are Banking (transit) and Finance (revenue) and both could potentially markup their respective portions as early as the week of Jan. 30.  The main obstacle in the Senate is finding the revenue necessary to maintain current funding levels, estimated to be between $12 and $14 billion.  There have been encouraging signs from Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that they are working on ways to find the revenue necessary to pay for the reauthorization bill. In the House, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has not moved a bill through their committee as EPW did in the Senate.  AGC members received an update last week from Republican staff on the committee where the staff laid out the possibility of moving a reauthorization bill in the next several weeks.  Big decisions yet to be made by House leadership include: the funding levels for the bill and a revenue source for those levels.  Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is committed to pay for part of the bill by expanding oil and gas production, but the revenue estimates from this source fall woefully short of what is needed to maintain current funding levels.  AGC has been told that Republican leaders are planning to bridge the gap between revenue from expanding energy production and remaining funding needed to maintain current funding levels.  If this is the path forward in the House, the obstacles to passage will be ensuring enough Republican votes for the package and avoiding  major opposition from Democrats. AGC continues to work with both House and Senate leaders and staff as this process plays out.  We have also kicked off our grassroots campaign, Make Transportation Job #1 where we are asking AGC chapters and members to send letters to their Representatives and Senators; sign a petition calling for swift passage of a reauthorization bill; and meet with their legislators when they are home in their districts and states. For more information, please contact Sean O’Neill at (202) 547-8892 or oneills@agc.org.