The Senate passed the biggest transportation infrastructure bill in a decade Thursday, sending to the White House a $305 billion five-year package that keeps federal money flowing to highway, transit and rail projects — and reopens the controversial Export-Import Bank.
After years of public pleas from the construction industry, a forceful lobbying blitz backed by Big Business and labor groups, and billions of dollars in bailouts, the Senate easily passed the bipartisan bill on a 83-16 vote just hours after the House approved the measure.
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The 1,300-page bill was nearly a decade in the making, and the White House has said President Barack Obama was ready to sign it — and not a moment too soon, since the authority that allows the Department of Transportation to cut checks for highway and transit projects expires Friday.
In addition to renewing highway and transit programs, the bill overhauls Amtrak in an effort to make the federally subsidized railroad more profitable and revives the Export-Import Bank, which Congress allowed to expire last summer after conservatives blocked its renewal.
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“This bill will be one of the most important things this Congress can accomplish for our country,” said House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) shortly before the House overwhelmingly approved the measure earlier in the day.
Congress had failed to agree on how to cobble together the funding for a long-term highway and transit bill since 2005. This latest bill even bumps up federal spending on road and transit projects, although it relies on a buffet of budget gimmicks to do so.
The bill (H. Rept. 114-357) relies on about $70 billion in unrelated pay-fors to keep the Highway Trust Fund on stable footing for the next five years, and it leans heavily on the Federal Reserve for most of that money, a move opposed by Fed Chair Janet Yellen.
“If the Fed can bail out the banks and give them preferred interest rates, they can do something for the greater economy and for average Americans. So it was their time to help out a little bit,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee.
Congressional leaders have held the bill up as a paragon of Capitol Hill humming along as it was designed to, with bipartisan input, an open amendment process and responsible funding.
But critics complained that lawmakers only succeeded by using budget wizardry and rosy assumptions to guarantee a fully funded bill.
“It doesn’t matter,” DeFazio said, brushing off concerns that the pay-fors might not raise as much as budget scorekeepers estimate.
“Because when this bill is signed into law, we transfer $70 billion into the trust fund. It’s mandatory spending. Whether that money ever shows up or not, that’s not our problem,” he added.
After mostly operating under an unrelenting cycle of funding extensions since 2009, the long list of industries that fix crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems are now gazing ahead to five years of funding certainty.
And the bill's industry advocates, which includes both the Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO, have stressed that long-term, guaranteed funding is needed for states and transit agencies to properly plan long-term projects.
The infrastructure package is also a fitting denouement to Sen. Barbara Boxer’s congressional career, which has spanned more than 30 years. The California Democrat, who is retiring after next year, has made no secret that getting a long-term bill to the president before she left Congress was her top priority and a key part of her legacy.
Boxer negotiated with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring the Senate bill to the floor earlier this summer, moving mountains to get it passed and bucking most of her party’s leadership in the process.
At one point, when the Senate bill appeared to be on life support in mid-July, Shuster slammed the measure, saying it was littered with Democratic priorities. And then-Speaker John Boehner described the Senate effort as a “piece of s---“ to a room of House Republicans.
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Even some Senate Democrats had worked behind the scenes to undermine the bill, hoping instead to fund transportation through a business tax overhaul that never materialized.
But Boxer, McConnell and Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) managed to push the bill across the finish line, eventually garnering a majority of support for final passage. The successful Senate vote has been credited by many as the catalyst that ultimately spurred the House to action on its own highway and transit legislation.
“That certainly helped,” Shuster said Thursday. Up until the Senate action in July, Shuster and his House transportation colleagues had been focused on a massive FAA overhaul.
The Senate's success brought new optimism to the effort to enact a long-term bill rather than simply another short-term extension before the end of the year — a crucial deadline that many thought if missed would lead to another round of funding stopgaps through the 2016 election.
“We worked with them very closely and we gave them a head start,” Inhofe said about the Senate’s role in prodding the House into action.
Through August recess and into the fall, House negotiators got to work, hammering out their own bipartisan bill. Shuster and DeFazio then navigated it through a committee markup in October, during the dramatic and tumultuous leadership shuffle in the House.
And in a critical first test for new Speaker Paul Ryan, lawmakers worked through hundreds of amendments on the floor before a majority of members signed on to support the House bill in early November.
Then the real work began: a team of House and Senate negotiators worked across the Capitol over the last few weeks to iron out every last detail, under pressure to shepherd a final agreement through Congress by the end of this week. The process wasn't easy for the staffers tasked with wrapping up the bill, most of whom worked through Thanksgiving week to finish the deal.
And now, the behemoth, multi-billion dollar package is headed to the White House to receive the final stamp of approval: Obama’s signature.
“It's a big deal. It's really a big deal,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
