Highways, Bridges and Roads

House GOP leaders are holding out hope for a vote this week on the oil-and-gas drilling portions of the wider transportation and energy package that they’re struggling to corral enough support to pass.

The $260 billion package plan includes provisions that mandate a major expansion of offshore oil-and-gas leasing, and would also open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling rigs.

“We are still beginning consideration of the energy/infrastructure plan on the floor this week, and we may or may not get as far as a vote on the energy piece, depending on several factors, including how many of the many amendments we can get through, and the timing of the expected vote on the previously unscheduled payroll/[unemployment insurance] agreement,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

He confirmed that votes on the transportation portions of the package have been punted until after next week’s President’s Day recess.

Freshman GOP Rep. Dennis Ross got hot when he found out his pension bill was part of the GOP transportation measure.

A key Republican on the Senate Budget Committee sharply criticized President Obama's proposal to use savings from reduced defense spending to help fund the Department of Transportation.

The $3.8 trillion 2013 budget that was unveiled by Obama this week includes $74 billion for DOT. The Obama budget includes $96.7 billion for "overseas contingent operations," but the White House has said money saved from winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could fund other areas of the federal budget, like transportation.

In a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday to review the DOT's appropriations request, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the war savings would provide $281 billion that would go to both the DOT's operating budget and the president's call for a spending $476 billion on a new surface transportation bill.

But New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) called the plan "a budget gimmick."

"Does the president believe we're going to be fighting in Afghanistan for the next 10 years?" Ayotte asked LaHood. 

"Fighting wars is not in my portfolio," LaHood responded. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday ridiculed House Republicans' foundering surface transportation legislation as "obnoxious," suggesting they should take a lesson on legislating from the Senate.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday that House plans to help fund transportation programs with a major expansion of oil-and-gas leasing don’t hold up to scrutiny.

The House GOP transportation bill mandates oil-and-gas leasing in areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, expands acreage available in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coast, and removes the prohibition on drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But Salazar, at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, said the GOP plan relies on “phantom revenue.”

“We know that these places are not going to be developed in the near-term at all,” Salazar said. “They would only provide less than 10 percent of the revenue needed for surface transportation.”

Speaker John Boehner is delaying a vote on the $260 billion transportation bill that was scheduled this week. 

Republicans looked to smooth a major House transportation bill's passage over objections from the right and left.

It predicts the highway trust fund would be $78 billion short after 10 years under the $260 billion highway bill. 

Paul said as soon as he is granted the vote, he will end his blockade of Senate business.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that the House will debate a wide-ranging energy and transportation package on the floor this week as several separate pieces of legislation.

The decision to move the 979-page package in pieces allows for “each major component of the plan to be debated and amended more openly, rather than as a single ‘comprehensive’ bill with limited debate and limited opportunity for amendment,” Boehner and Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) said in a joint statement.

Boehner bashed what he called Democrats’ “preference for large bills with limited debate and minimal opportunities for amendment.”