Highways, Bridges and Roads

The House voted to instruct conferees on the highway bill to keep language in the House measure that would block the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) attempt to regulate coal ash.

Members voted 260-138 in favor of the motion to instruct, which was offered by Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.). The motion was debated Wednesday evening.

As lawmakers work to salvage a deal on a new transportation funding bill, a group of 150 House Democrats is calling on the committee negotiating the measure to avoid using money from a trust fund for land and water conservation.

The group said in a letter to highway conference committee leaders Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) that the 47-member panel that has been negotiating on the transportation bill for more than a month should find other sources of money for road and transit projects.

"We are writing to ask that you include in the final conference report on the surface transportation reauthorization the Senate-passed language on the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF)," the lawmakers wrote.

"We support the Senate-passed LWCF provision, the LWCF/RESTORE Act amendment, which reaffirms Congress's commitment to the LWCF program and provides dedicated funding for the next two years and reauthorizes the program through 2022," the group's letter continued. "The LWCF is and always has been a bipartisan program and is a proven economic driver that ensures all Americans have access to outdoor recreation opportunities." 

The Senate will pass the farm bill Thursday, and the House will pass a Republican energy bill designed to encourage more domestic production.

The Senate meets at 10:30 a.m. and has eight more amendment votes to go on the farm bill, S. 3240, before voting on final passage. Remaining amendments include language that would require labeling of food made from genetically modified material and prevent the EPA from conducting aerial surveillance of farms.

A new sense of optimism percolated at transportation negotiations as the leaders of House-to-Senate talks resumed their work. 

The House voted 386-34 on Wednesday to instruct conferees to the House-Senate negotiations on a highway bill to finish their work by Friday.

The vote is the latest attempt by House members to influence the ongoing talks, although the move is largely seen as symbolic and the vote is nonbinding.

Boxer's comments come after committee leaders were urged by Boehner and Reid to "redouble" efforts to reach a compromise.

The offer came as leaders of both parties intervened in the stalled talks in a last-ditch effort to salvage them.

On a day when House Democrats and Republicans skirmished over financial reform and environmental spending proposals, the 2013 transportation and housing spending bill passed out of the Appropriations Committee in a relatively congenial atmosphere.

The bill is set to become the seventh of 12 annual spending bills to receive a House floor vote.

The bill cuts spending by nearly $4 billion compared to current funding, with most of that coming out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD administration costs, Section 8, Choice Neighborhoods and Sustainable Community programs all get cut.

On the other hand, Community Development Block Grants get a $400 million increase and Homeless Assistance Grants get a $100 million increase.

On transportation, the two sides also found areas to compromise and held up the bill as a contrast to the troubled highway authorization bill, which stands on the precipice of a failed House-Senate conference committee this week.

“I’d encourage my Republican colleagues to take a lesson from the Appropriations Committee where we can still get our work done and where willingness to reach bipartisan compromise is still considered a virtue, not a flaw,” Appropriations Committee ranking member Norm Dicks (R-Wash.) said at the markup.

Overall the “THUD” bill contains $51.6 billion in funding, $2 billion below Obama’s request.

Amtrak gets more money and the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen air traffic control modernization effort also gets an increase.

On the other hand, Capital Investment Grants are cut by $418 million and the Federal Transit Administration loses $181 million.

“[W]e tried to be balanced in our approach with this bill, but rejected new, unauthorized programs requested by the president,” said Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), the spending cardinal in charge of the bill.

The leaders are making a last-ditch effort to reach a transportation deal ahead of the June 30 deadline.

Congressional negotiations about a new transportation bill are entering their sixth week, with most observers thinking there is no longer hope for lawmakers to reach a possible compromise.

Lawmakers have until June 30 to agree on a new bill to appropriate road and transit projects. But with two weeks to go before the scheduled expiration of the current highway funding, they have very little to show for more than a month's worth of negotiations.