Contact Your Representative Today to Oppose Change to House Rules
Incoming House Republican leaders recently unveiled new rules governing floor procedure that could jeopardize the special budgetary protections provided for the Highway Trust Fund. The express goal is to increase transparency and facilitate spending cuts, including the elimination of guaranteed funding levels that state DOTs count on to plan and implement multi-year transportation improvement programs.
As enacted in TEA-21 in 1998 and reinforced under SAFETEA-LU, any member of the House can raise a point of order to block legislation that would reduce federal highway investment from the levels set in a multi-year surface transportation authorization bill. The rule was designed to ensure the integrity of the Highway Trust Fund by making sure all highway user fees collected by the federal government are invested in surface transportation improvements.
A press release from House Rules Committee Republicans explains the intent of the proposed change: “Highway funding, with some exceptions, will now be treated as other general spending and therefore be subject to any member attempt to reduce the spending.”
House Republicans will vote on this rules package, and any amendments to it, on Tuesday, January 4, 2011. Democrats will be given an opportunity to offer an alternative on the House Floor on January 5, but it will likely fail on a party-line vote. This is an entirely House Republican matter.
The only way this proposal will be modified is if House Republicans hear from you, their constituents, over the next week about the damage this change would do to state transportation programs and the engineering and construction industry.
ACEC members are urged to contact Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives from your home state and urge them to remove the transportation funding provision (Subsection (2)(d)(4) on pages 10-11) from the House Rules package. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121, and ask to be directed to your Representative.
Key Points:
- The proposed House Rules change to highway investment should be dropped as it would break the pledge with motorists by allowing federal user fee revenues to be withheld instead of invested in transportation improvements.
- The plan would inject further uncertainty into an already destabilized U.S. transportation construction marketplace where unemployment is in excess of 18 percent—twice the national average.
- The 112th Congress should focus on enacting a multi-year reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program that creates jobs and boosts the economy, not on procedural maneuvers that make it easier to cut highway investment.
If you have questions, please contact Matt Reiffer, ACEC Director of Transportation Programs, (202) 682-4308 ormreiffer@acec.org.