Senate Highway Vote Puts Rep. Shuster in Driver's Seat

By David Safford
LEGI-SLATE News Service
Thursday, March 12, 1998

The Senate's overwhelming vote Thursday to approve its $214 billion transportation bill [S. 1173] may have helped one man in Congress more than anyone else -- Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa.

Shuster, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is suddenly in the driver's seat, since the Senate approved a significant spending increase in its reauthorization of the now-expired $157 billion Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA).

"I was pleasantly stunned by what is happening over in the Senate," Shuster said with a smile earlier in the week, after that chamber had voted to add an extra $31 billion to an earlier version of its bill. It will make his firmly held goal of increasing federal transportation spending that much easier.

This is a big change from last year, when Shuster was fighting his own party's leadership tooth-and-nail over his own $218 billion ISTEA reauthorization legislation [H.R. 2400]. At that time the Senate was insisting on holding the line with a much more restrained $183 billion proposal.

Shuster's rationale for increasing spending by so much is that a rising tide can lift all boats: by increasing spending for all states, he could redistribute the funds more fairly among them without sparking a bloody regional fight over a smaller pot of money.

And just such a fight had long been brewing.

A number of so-called "donor" states from the South and the Midwest were demanding a more equitable return on the federal fuel taxes they send to Washington. These states were getting as little as 71 cents in federal transportation funds for every dollar they paid in federal fuel taxes, while other "donee" states reaped more in federal aid than they sent to Washington in taxes.

But Shuster's opponents in both chambers, including powerful appropriators and budgeteers, claimed that his expensive and expansive proposal would blow a hole right through the balanced budget agreement painstakingly hammered out with the Clinton administration last year.

Shuster managed to fight his critics to a standstill last fall, helped by the solid bipartisan backing of his 73-member committee, which is the largest in the history of Congress. He secured an agreement from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to delay action on the bill until the fiscal 1999 budget season when Congress could reconsider its revenue projections.

Luck and economic prosperity were on his side, as recent budget forecasts showed that a surplus would be realized in Fiscal 1999 that had not been firmly predicted last year.

Shuster also played his ace political card in forcing a vote on his bill during an election year. Since highway projects have always been prized pieces of political pork -- a key way for lawmakers to demonstrate their legislative prowess to a skeptical constituency -- it would become that much more difficult for Congress to resist spending increases.

"Someone told me that next year is an election year," Shuster coyly told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last May.

In the Senate, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I., managed to get a fiscally restrained ISTEA reauthorization bill through his committee on a unanimous vote last year. He then tried to move his bill to the Senate floor as quickly as possible to avoid election-year politics but it became embroiled in controversy over campaign finance reform [S. 8] and Senate Majority Leader Lott, R-Miss., had no choice but to pull it off the floor.

In the interim, because ISTEA expired Sept. 30, 1997, Congress passed a short-term ISTEA extension, which itself is scheduled to expire May 1, 1998.

When Congress reconvened this year, however, Lott realized that it would be virtually impossible to resist demands for funding increases during an election year. So he brought Chafee, Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and other key senators into his office to discuss boosting highway spending. Sens. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Phil Gramm, R-Texas, had been leading the charge to increase highway spending by $31 billion.

The senators agreed to a $26 billion increase, much closer to the Byrd- Gramm position than the $18 billion initially offered by Domenici.

Domenici offered tepid support for the agreement, saying, "the people of this country deserve that highway trust fund money be spent on highways, and that's why it is very difficult to say we should not have this program." The difficult task of finding ways in the budget to offset this new spending falls to him in the budget his panel will write.

The following day, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y. -- who is in a tight re- election battle and is courting votes from his transit-dependent New York City constituency -- announced that he would seek to add $5 billion to the $35.7 billion set aside for mass transit.

This announcement did not sit particularly well with Domenici, who chastised him in a Capitol elevator. "[You just] got $2.5 to $3 billion in highways -- what the hell do you want to be a hog for?" an exasperated Domenici asked the New York senator.

Under pressure from environmental groups, and facing a possible filibuster by D'Amato, the Senate leadership found another $5 billion for transit. But D'Amato was not able to bring home the bacon quite as effectively as he would have liked.

Demonstrating that the Northeast has lost some of its traditional political clout -- Sen. Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was the principal author of ISTEA in 1991 -- D'Amato had to share a big chunk of the $5 billion increase with other states.

About $2.4 billion of it will be dedicated to "new starts," which help communities initiate mass transit programs. Had D'Amato not cut a deal, Sens. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Rod Grams, R-Minn., were prepared to offer an amendment to redistribute the funds and had the votes to win.

With the Senate finally finishing work on its $214 billion package, the focus now turns to the House.

The next order of business for Shuster will be to lock in the spending increases so that appropriators won't be tempted to spend less money than the legislation authorizes.

"More dollars in budget authority is a wonderful first step, but the process must change so we know the revenue can be spent," he said, so transportation supporters are not "back in the same old soup" of having appropriations bills fall far short of the mark when it comes time to write the checks.

Congressional appropriators may provide less money than authorized in an effort to stay within annual budget caps. Shuster is looking for assurances from House leaders that the money will indeed be spent in upcoming appropriations measures.

Shuster, Gingrich and other House leaders are currently debating when to bring the ISTEA bill to the floor. Shuster says that he would like to have his bill on the House floor by the Easter recess, which begins April 2, and to the president's desk by Memorial Day.

This is a tight schedule, especially considering that a schedule for the budget resolution still has not been worked out. It is possible that the House might follow the Senate's lead and move Shuster's bill before the budget resolution, but that has not yet been determined.

The leadership is "certainly open to seriously considering it," Shuster said. "It is certainly on the table."

House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, R-Ohio, has fought Shuster every step of the way on this issue.

But Shuster dismisses any serious challenges by Kasich, saying, "I think John can count, so he's probably figured out that I've got the votes."