With Highway Bill Stalled, Congress Extends Funding

Congress approved an eight-month extension of temporary highway funding Thursday with lawmakers still wrangling over spending and other proposals and reluctant to test a White House veto threat.

The action all but concluded efforts this year to negotiate a multiyear bill as House-Senate talks are stalled and time is quickly running short for a deal, some lawmakers indicated.

The sixth stopgap measure of the past year will push the deadline for action well beyond the influence of the November presidential election and comfortably into the next Congress.

“This has been a maddening process for those of us who care about transportation,” said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and member of the House Transportation Committee.

The extension, approved easily by both houses, would continue funding at the roughly $35-billion level approved for fiscal 2004, which was to expire at the end of the day.

Also slipped into the extension over the objection of consumer and safety groups was a provision to permit for up to one year the continuation of new work and rest rules for commercial truckers that were rejected by an appeals court this summer as arbitrary. The Transportation Department will eventually have to rewrite the regulations to comply with the court’s decision.

House-Senate negotiators trying to hammer out a final version have struggled with a proposed six-year highway blueprint for months.

They have been hampered by Bush administration demands to curb spending and reluctance by the Republican-led Congress to challenge a threat by the White House to veto anything that exceeds its total spending goal of $256 billion.

President Bush has yet to veto a bill, and some Democrats do not think he would reject highway legislation if it were approved and sent to him.

“The administration has been one of the biggest roadblocks in our path,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat.

Robert Johnson, a Transportation Department spokesman, said the administration would defer to lawmakers to reach consensus.

“We’re watching the Hill do its work on this. We want to keep the states in business so they can do their planning and keep their projects moving,” Johnson said.

Negotiations have also slowed over allocations to “donor” states, or states that send more to Washington in gas tax revenue than they get back from the government for road and transit projects. Those states want a bigger cut this time.

Highway legislation is usually not controversial because of the economic stimulus it provides. But Bush has made it an election-year referendum on spending in an era of record deficits.

House and Senate negotiators were until recently more than $35 billion apart on a final figure, but they have informally embraced a price tag of $299 billion for the six-year package.

Rep. Don Young, an Alaska Republican and chairman of the Transportation Committee, said he was not giving up on a final bill during the waning days of the session. Lawmakers hope to leave as soon as next week and not return until after the Nov. 2 election. A short lame-duck session is expected.