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House Floor Version of TEA LU Bill - 4/2/04

[an addendum to information provided at http://www.calinst.org/datapages/transpo.htm ]

House Approves Six-Year Transportation Bill By Veto-Proof Margin

The $275 billion House surface transportation bill known as the Transportation Equity Act: Legacy for Users (TEA LU) passed the House floor on April 2, 2004, by a vote of 357 to 65.

The six-year TEA LU bill (H.R.3550) exceeds the White House limit on authorizations by $19 billion, although it is significantly less expensive than the Senate's $318 billion measure approved in February. House and Senate conferees will meet after Congress' Spring recess to consider developing a final bill. Bush Administration officials maintain they will recommend a veto of any bill costing more than the President's $256 billion Safe Accountable Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA).

TEALU faced a number of amendments before its passage was complete, adopting 11 of them including a Floor Manager's amendment offered by bill author and House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Don Young (AK). The Young amendment, passed by voice vote, made several changes to the bill including: altering the Revenue Aligned Budget Authority (RABA) trigger to base its adjustments on two year projections rather than one (as is provided in current law); the creation of a $25 million per year set-aside from the Bridge program to fund seismic retrofit activities (of which $10 million per year is reserved for an Alaska project); the designation of a High Priority corridor running through Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties (though funding totals remain unspecified); an increase in the number of member-requested High Priority projects; funding for a study on transit security and emergency preparedness in the 38 urbanized areas with populations of over 1 million people; and an increase in high speed rail development programs to $70 million per year from 2005 to 2012.

A series of other amendments were adopted for inclusion in the final bill. One by Rep. Mark Kennedy (MN) to permit highway tolls on new voluntary-use lanes until those lanes had raised enough toll-revenue to pay for themselves, was approved by a vote of 231 to 193. Another amendment giving single-occupancy hybrid vehicle drivers access to high occupancy vehicle lanes (HOV) without requiring states to charge tolls was offered by Rep. Adam Schiff (Burbank) and agreed to by voice vote.

TEALU maintains TEA-21's Minimum Guarantee (MG) formula, which required that each state receive back federal highway spending that totals a minimum of 90.5 percent of the gas and other road taxes attributable to the state. An amendment by Rep. Isakson (GA), which failed 170-254, sought to boost every state's MG funds by expanding the scope of the minimum guaranteed return of highway trust fund dollars to include high priority projects and the newly created projects of regional and national significance. (In the end, most California Members of Congress opposed the amendment.) A number of donor states - states such as California that pay more highway taxes than are received in federal highway funds - had sought to increase the minimum return to 95 percent. The final House bill retains a "reopener provision," however, requiring Congress to revisit the issue of funding equity to states by the end of 2005 or risk a temporary stoppage of U.S. transportation spending.

TEA-21 expired on September 30, 2003, and stop gap measures have kept transportation programs in operation since then -- the latest version is due to expire at the end of April 2004.

For a detailed discussion of the House surface transportation bill's provisions visit the California Institute website at http://www.calinst.org/transpo.htm .

A full list of California’s highway and transit earmarks, spreadsheets showing national totals for highway and transit component programs from the transportation bills, as well as a general side-by-side comparing transit provisions from the House, Senate, and Administration bills with current law, are available at http://www.calinst.org/transpo.htm .  The data and capabilities are derived from the Federal Formula Grants and California Project – a joint venture between the California Institute and the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

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