By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 2, 1998; Page A04

The House last night voted 337 to 80 to approve a historically huge $217 billion highway and mass transit reauthorization bill that would increase spending by 43 percent over the next six years, pump a stream of money into state transportation departments and shower a vast array of new construction projects on almost all congressional districts.

While some conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats strongly objected to what they termed outrageous election year pork-barrel spending, the House rejected, 337 to 79, an amendment that would have eliminated 1,467 congressionally designated highway projects and hundreds of other mass transit projects. Before it becomes law, a final bill must be worked out with the Senate later this month and sent to President Clinton.

"This is not pork, this is steak," said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), echoing a widely held sentiment on both sides of the aisle. "And if you want to continue to be a prime rib country, you got to pass this bill quick."

"The infrastructure of the United States is rotting -- it is falling apart right under us," said Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), whose state would receive funding for a major bridge replacement project. "It is high time that we paid attention to those needs."

But some opponents, including members of the Appropriations and Budget committees, complained that Congress was approving highway increases even before it has set overall spending priorities for the coming year. They warned that the spending cuts needed to make room for additional highway spending likely would come out of veterans' benefits and other mandatory programs, as well as from some of President Clinton's domestic spending initiatives.

"We're moving down the wrong highway," Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said. "Are we prepared as a great nation to approve concrete over children? Bridges over books? Pavement over people?"

Even as the House moved toward passage of the bill, White House budget director Franklin D. Raines issued a statement urging the House and Senate "to pause and take a deep breath and consider how we're going to pay for this."

The far-ranging bill -- governing spending for everything from highway, bridge and parkway construction to subway, bus and bikeway projects -- would boost overall transportation spending by nearly $30 billion above what is allowed under last year's balanced budget agreement. The excess spending must be offset with cuts in other domestic programs, although House GOP leaders have refused to say where those cuts will be made until they meet in conference with the Senate.

Virginia would get about $700 million annually for six years for road and transit spending under the House bill, while Maryland would get $300 million and the District $100 million -- all substantial increases.

But while the Senate has approved $900 million toward the $1.6 billion cost of replacing the aging, federally owned Woodrow Wilson Bridge in the Washington area, the House bill provides no such funding and would turn over title of the bridge to Virginia, Maryland and the District. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who failed to get funding for the bridge included in the House bill, declared, "This fight isn't over."

The House also rejected, 225 to 194, an amendment by Rep. Marge Roukema (R-N.J.) to ban the use of race- and gender-based preferences in awarding transportation contracts, in favor of expanded efforts to recruit businesses owned by women and minorities and to encourage contractors to request bids from these firms. The Senate rejected a similar proposal in its version of the highway bill.

Passage of the bill marks an important victory for House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), who persuaded the House GOP leadership to go along with the major spending increase and then quickly orchestrated passage of his bill while vanquishing detractors on the floor.

"America is growing and prospering, but our infrastructure is crumbling," Shuster said. "This bill will save lives; this bill will give our country a productive boost and an economic boost. This will create jobs."

A loose coalition of conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats -- ranging from House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) and Rep. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to Reps. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) and David Minge (D-Minn.) -- criticized Shuster and the GOP leadership for breaching last year's balanced budget deal. Conservative Republicans also charged that GOP leaders were violating their own fiscal precepts by sanctioning the kind of pork-barrel spending they once would have condemned.

"I hope and pray that somehow this Republican majority finds its roots again because I believe this is it -- we are losing it," Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said. Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said, "This is a corrupt process to extend the political careers . . . of members of this body. It ought to stop."

During a testy exchange on the floor, Graham told Shuster, "You have taken the balanced budget agreement and you made a sham out of it, and we all should be ashamed."

But Shuster dismissed his critics as "arrogant" for suggesting that they, rather than their colleagues, can better judge how to spend a portion of the highway funds, and "hypocritical" for complaining about pork-barrel spending when some of them requested or passed along requests for special projects in their own districts.

At the same time, scores of Republicans and Democrats whose districts will prosper under the bill rallied to Shuster's side in arguing that the earmarked spending is critical to repairing the nation's highways and bridges, spurring economic development and enhancing highway safety.

At the heart of Shuster's highway plan is the requirement that future federal gasoline tax revenue be used exclusively for highway spending and not for other types of spending or offsetting the deficit. Shuster and his allies have fought for years to move the trust fund "off budget" and hence out of bounds for other types of spending or deficit reduction.

The reauthorization legislation, called the Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act, roughly mirrors the overall spending levels approved by the Senate last month. But many differences must be worked out by the House and Senate before a May 1 deadline for the new highway construction season.

For example, the House spurned a Senate-passed anti-drunken driving measure that would force all states to lower the legal blood alcohol limit to 80 milligrams of alcohol per deciliter of blood or suffer the loss of as much as 10 percent of federal highway funds. While the measure appears to enjoy broad-based support, the GOP leadership refused to allow it to be offered as an amendment to the highway bill.

There are also important differences between the formulas for distributing highway funds among the state and eliminating past regional inequities. And the Senate-passed bill contains little earmarked pork-barrel spending.

Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said this week that the House's long list of so-called "high priority" highway and mass transit projects likely would be trimmed in conference.

Staff writers Stephen C. Fehr and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.