On Wednesday, the Senate voted to proceed with debate on the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee’s highway, transit, and rail funding measure, known as the Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act.
While the DRIVE Act authorizes surface transportation funding for six years, the measure only identifies three years of offsets to fund the program. Yesterday afternoon, the Senate EPW Committee released updated language to the DRIVE Act that made several amendments to the offsets used to pay for the bill, as well as providing increased money for transit, and a provision that would remedy the issue of funding locally owned on-system bridges.
The Senate will likely work through the weekend debating various amendments that will be proposed, many of which will be unrelated to the actual transportation program, in an effort to complete its work before the end of next week to prevent a shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). The House of Representatives recently passed a short-term extension to providing funding to the HTF through December 18, 2015. House leadership believes this short-term extension would provide enough time for the House and Senate to reach an agreement over comprehensive tax reform to provide for a longer term reauthorization of the surface transportation program.