Update: Transportation Committee staff says Mica has confirmed what he meant: “He was referring to the share. Keep in mind that we have no numbers or details for a bill yet — the hearing process is not yet finished and we have not drafted a bill. He was simply speculating at this point.” Using the […]

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is having its say about the president’s ambitious – and unpaid-for – budget request for transportation. “The [president’s] proposal assumes a ‘placeholder revenue increase’ of $435 billion over a 10-year period but does not identify how to pay for the revenue increase,” says the committee’s “Views and Estimates” document, […]

Transit officials spent the day on Capitol Hill yesterday, meeting with Congressional offices as part of the American Public Transportation Association’s legislative conference. Transportation Committee Chair John Mica suggested they ask members for a six-year bill. Secretary Ray LaHood urged them to ask for support for President Obama’s “big, bold vision” for transportation. Rep. Steve […]

This morning, House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica told transit professionals gathered at the American Public Transportation Association’s legislative conference that he’s still hoping to pass a bill out of the House by May in order to get it signed before September 30, when the current extension of SAFETEA-LU expires. “It’ll be very difficult after […]

TIGER grants, announced last year, hang in the balance as the Senate debates the package of House-passed spending cuts. Congress is about to vote on another extension of the current budget, cutting another $2 billion per week. (Up until now, those “cuts” have mostly been budget items from 2010 that the Democrats weren’t going to […]

Every year, the cyclists that gather in Washington for the National Bike Summit meet with hundreds of Congressional offices to ask for expanded bike funding. This year, they’re just asking lawmakers not to cut it. With an anti-spending mood prevailing inside the Beltway, bicycling advocates are trying to be realistic. “We haven’t forgotten that there’s […]

Senator Barbara Boxer got down to brass tacks on transportation funding in a committee hearing yesterday, even as DOT Secretary Ray LaHood remained vague on how to pay for the president’s ambitious proposal. Boxer said she’s not in favor of raising the gas tax, but she’d like it to be indexed to inflation. “We don’t […]

The two houses of Congress were so much at odds over the Republicans’ proposed spending cuts that they needed two more weeks to bicker about it. So last week, they pushed off a little longer final passage of the budget for a fiscal year that started five months ago. But in order to even pass […]

As gas tax revenues wane, making it harder to finance a long-term transportation bill, ideas are beginning to circulate about how to save the (very poorly named) Highway Trust Fund. Some say the gas tax needs to rise. Others say fewer programs need to be financed out of the fund, which pays for all federal […]