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The Democratic-led House is mounting a final push to approve a massive infrastructure bill before the July 4 holiday, covering everything from highways and mass transit to upgrading schools and water-treatment plants.
How will this all be paid for? Democrats offer few clues. In that, they are not alone — infrastructure is Washington’s perennial “eat your dessert first, never mind the vegetables” priority.
What’s pushing Congress to act is the expiration of a highway-funding law at the end of September. Normally a periodic renewal of the law gives politicians in both parties incentive to work on the larger spending package, but as a hotly contested presidential race gets underway amid a raging pandemic, the prospects for something to get done before the November election appear dim.
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And even if Democrats could find ways to pay for their 2,309-page bill, it would be difficult to reconcile with a starkly different bill in the Republican-controlled Senate.
“The House bill is a testament to the love affair that the far left has with red tape and the Green New Deal,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the Wyoming Republican who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Democrats, on the other hand, see their estimated $1.5 trillion effort as the comprehensive solution to a variety of ills. The bill, named the “Moving Forward Act,” includes a multi-year reauthorization of the government’s surface transportation programs to replace the expiring law. But it also includes $130 billion for schools, $100 billion for rural broadband, and $100 billion for affordable housing.
While those are the big-ticket items, it also includes a variety of smaller items, ranging from $25 billion to help keep the U.S. Postal Service afloat to changing car-safety ratings to include assessments of advanced anti-drunk-driving technology that has yet to be developed.
“This is a just a happy day for us to be able to put forth something so comprehensive, so well thought out, so job-creating, so economically growing of the economy, preserving of our planet, respectful of our children, meeting the needs for housing in our country and, again, preserving, probably, one of the most popular entities of government, of federal government, the Postal Service,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a June 18 press conference touting the bill.
Yet House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, acknowledged the bill will not include a way to offset its cost, defending the choice by comparing the Democrats’ stance to that of the White House.
“We’re going to pass it without one,” Hoyer told reporters last Tuesday on a conference call. Hoyer said Trump had proposed spending $2 trillion on infrastructure, but he backed away in 2019 when Democrats asked for his help in finding ways to pay for it.
“We had a subsequent meeting to do so, and he was angry at the speaker saying he was conducting a cover-up. He refused to meet, walked out of the meeting — came in late, walked out of the meeting, and immediately had a press conference, so it was a setup,” Hoyer said.
Rep. Richard Neal, chairman of the House’s tax-writing panel, said the bill would include a new municipal bond program but would mostly be paid for with borrowing.
“The president, as you know, has said $2 trillion of borrowed money. He staked out that position. So we think that on the revenue side, we’re open to discussions and negotiations,” Neal said.
Barrasso acknowledged he, too, is still trying to solve the pay-for riddle.
“I’ve been working with Sen. McConnell as well as [Sen. Charles] Grassley on trying to make some decisions about those,” said Barrasso, referring to the Senate majority leader and the chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.
Complicating matters is that the current law authorizing federal surface transportation programs, which would be included in a larger infrastructure bill, expires the same day by which lawmakers must extend funding for the government or face another shutdown.
Tying the two issues together in a stopgap spending bill would be the normal solution to get lawmakers past the election, but Barrasso said he still hopes for a broader solution — if not one as broad as Democrats have proposed.
“We know when it expires and I want to get it done before then,” he said.
Already, the fund for highway projects, paid for by gas and diesel taxes, is taking in less than forecast as driving has declined during the lockdown. Longer term, the use of electric vehicles and hybrids means the fund will be bring in less revenue, an issue that will have to be dealt with by lawmakers at some point.
The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently projected the highway trust fund will be exhausted in 2021, a year sooner than the 2022 date estimated by the Congressional Budget Office before the coronavirus crisis.
