After years of indecision and short-term extensions, the House of Representatives passed a six-year transportation bill yesterday. Since the bill is not much different from a bill passed by the Senate a few months ago, it seems likely that the two will agree on a final bill later this month.
One of the main obstacles to the bill has been fiscal conservatives (and some liberals) who objected to $80 billion of deficit spending over the next six years. Many of the conservatives wanted to cut spending to be no more than gas tax and other highway revenues; the liberals wanted to raise gas taxes to cover the deficits and provide revenues for even more spending on roads and transit. Instead, the House stayed the course of spending more than is available, using various accounting tricks to cover the deficits.
What really happened is that newly minted House Speaker Paul Ryan wanted to prove his worth, so he twisted enough arms to get the bill passed. The bill even includes reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which many conservatives hated. Apparently, the long-term opponents of this bank and transportation deficits just gave Ryan his honeymoon and allowed the bill to pass without a big fight: only 64 members of the House voted against the final bill.
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I’ll have more analysis of the bill soon, but at first glance it appears to be a disaster for those who want transportation dollars spent as cost effectively as possible. The old saying about sausage and laws applies here. Speaker Boehner, the supposed centrist, was unable to get a bill even to the floor of the House. But he resigns and his replacement, the supposed fiscal conservative, gets a deficit-laden bill passed in a few days. If Boehner had remained in office, the bill never would have passed. So now taxpayers will be stuck for the next six years with a law that spends a lot of their money without providing decent transportation spending.
