Infrastructure Alert - March 13, 2012

Washington, D.C., continues to arm wrestle over transportation funding legislation, as the Senate and House work to move competing legislation. Last week saw support for the House bill crumble away, even as leaders tried to work out contentious provisions in their bill. Meanwhile, the Senate has compromised on a series of amendments and says they will finish work on their bipartisan bill by the end of this week. Despite the glacial pace on the Hill, there has been much activity and many funding announcements at the agencies and on the state level. Very noteworthy was Chicago's announcement that it will create an Infrastructure Trust, which will leverage private investment to retrofit buildings in the city for greater energy efficiency.

On The Hill

This past week the Senate moved closer to passing a bipartisan transportation bill. The bill, combining work from the Senate Banking, Commerce, Finance and Environment and Public Works committees, would reauthorize transportation funding for two years at $109 billion.

After weeks of negotiations Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-Ky.) agreed to consider 30 amendments, 18 of which actually relate to provisions in the 1500 page bill. At the end of last week, senators had voted on nine of the amendments, passing four and rejecting five. Included in the rejected provisions were proposals to expedite the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Senate resumes voting on the remaining amendments this week with a vote on final passage expected Tuesday.

On the other hand, the past two weeks saw the House of Representatives moving farther, and farther away from passing the House Republican Leaders' original 5 year, $260 billion transportation reauthorization. In hopes of passing the bill, Rep. Boehner (R-Ohio) had restored dedicated transit funding but kept out many other provisions considered to be controversial, such as new revenues through expansion of domestic drilling and spending levels that many conservatives in his own party considered too high.

After failing to gather support for the original proposed five year legislation, Republican leaders also attempted to work with an 18 month bill, but it quickly became clear that a shorter, extension type bill would not pass the House either. As passage of the Senate bill looks likely, many believe that the House's only option is to take up the two year Senate bill or draft its own legislation that is very similar.

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