The five-year surface transportation reauthorization includes many elements favored by freight advocates, but some are disappointed that customs fees are being diverted to help pay for the bill.
House leaders have scheduled a vote Thursday on the $305 billion, five-year compromise highway bill that negotiators for both chambers of Congress hammered out earlier this week. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure Friday, hours before current temporary funding of surface transportation programs is scheduled to expire.
The White House said President Obama will sign the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which is heavily weighted toward funding infrastructure improvements for the nation’s highways, bridges and rails. Money to cover the transportation spending will come from gas and diesel taxes and $70 billion in offsets from other parts of the budget to make up for the user fee shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund.
One area money is being transferred from is customs fees. The bill indexes customs fees to inflation and then assigns revenue from those increase to the Transportation Department’s highway account. The provision is expected to raise $5.7 billion in Customs fees over 10 years for highway and infrastructure funding, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Trade associations for port authorities, airlines, and importers and exporters, however, are among those unhappy with the customs fee diversions. They argue that Customs and Border Protection faces a manpower shortage already that is causing delays for trade and travel and ports of entry and that the money should go for its intended purpose.
“Airline customers are already overtaxed, and this agreement will further drive up the cost of travel for the two million passengers who fly on U.S. airlines every day. It is unfortunate that, once again, Congress is placing the burden to fund highway spending on the backs of the flying public,” trade group Airlines for America said in a statement.
Another method being used to pay for the bill is selling off oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Critics point out that the objective of the SPR is to buy oil at low prices and sell it when its high to help the U.S. economy, but crude oil prices are now less than half what they were 18 months ago.
Additional funding is supposed to come from hiring private contractors to go after people who are delinquent on their federal taxes.
“If passed, this legislation would be a real step forward for our transportation infrastructure after years of short-term patches,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday.
“We’ve talked a lot about the need that state and local authorities have for some certainty,” said Earnest. “Infrastructure projects often — at least the most impactful ones — often will take years to build, and if the federal government is providing funding at increments of a few months at a time, it’s going to undermine their ability to effectively plan for the long term.”
Freight transportation gets a big boost in the FAST Act, with nearly $11 billion in dedicated funding for the first time. More than half that amount will go towards a National Highway Freight Program disbursed to states by a percentage formula, while another $4.5 billion will be available through competitive grants for nationally significant projects across all surface modes, including ports.
The legislation also increases the amount of highway miles designated as part of the national freight highway system and includes 1,200 miles of “first-and-last-mile” roadway links to seaports and other intermodal transfer facilities.
Congress set to vote on highway bill
