A House committee majority went ahead with their plan to punish everyone who rides public transportation, as well as jeopardizing thousands of jobs in the public transit, construction and manufacturing industries.

In doing this, House leadership and this committee ignored broad, bipartisan opposition from across the country — from governors, state transportation officials, health professionals, business organizations, and from across the political spectrum — as well as thousands of messages from voters in their districts. (Including many of you who sent messages or made phone calls last week.)

With this incredible turn of events, this House transportation bill has passed the tipping point, and unfortunately demands our full opposition. Will you help us defeat it? Let your representative know that this full transportation bill must not pass the House!

Tell your representatives to vote “NO” on H.R. 7, the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.

This bill:

• Eliminates all dedicated funding for public transportation, leaving millions of riders already faced with service cuts and fare increases out in the cold.
• Fails to do enough to create jobs and put Americans back to work, also threatening millions of current transit, construction and manufacturing jobs.
• Ends the tiny amount of funding that helps make dangerous streets and roads safer for children, as well as others on foot or bike.
• Does not go far enough ensure that we fix our bridges and roads.

House leaders are preparing to move this bill to the floor very soon. It could be debated by House members as early as this week, and our representatives need to hear from their voters.

Join us and send a message to your representative and tell them to vote “NO” on H.R. 7.

We desperately need a new federal transportation bill, but this proposal being advanced by the House is not it. Leaders in the House need to come up with a better bill – one that helps build the 21st Century transportation system America needs.

“For more than three years, our coalition has worked hard for an updated federal transportation program that meets our needs in the 21st century; that creates jobs and lays the foundation for a rejuvenated economy; that balances the need to keep our highway system strong while augmenting it with other options. We still remain urgently committed to that goal.

“It is with deep disappointment, therefore, that we in the Transportation for America coalition find ourselves compelled to oppose the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act as advanced by House leadership. While we commend Chairman Mica (R-FL) for doing what he can to move a long-term transportation bill forward, the full legislation that is now heading to the floor of the House has significant fatal flaws. The bill:

• Unfairly punishes current and would-be users of public transportation by ending all dedicated funding for public transportation, threatening to degrade further the service and state of repair of our transit systems;
• Leaves Americans with fewer transportation options rather than more, and deeper dependence on oil rather than less;
• Undermines safety and public health and takes resources away from non-motorized forms of transportation;
• Does not go far enough to ensure the state of good repair of our bridges, highways, railways and other systems;
• And undercuts citizens’ ability to raise environmental, health and other concerns about the impact of transportation projects.

“It is our hope that House leaders will hear our concerns, as well as those of the many others across the political spectrum who are as disappointed as we are, and bring forth a dramatically different and improved bill that can create jobs and spur the economy. The time is now for passage of a transportation bill we can all agree on.”

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3:31 That may be it for most of the live-blogging for today, unless the amendment on bridge repair comes up soon. We’ll likely be back at the end of the day or tomorrow to wrap things up and summarize. You can follow our tweets from the markup @t4americaand you can see others tweeting and discussing with the hashtag #TranspoMarkup

Also, don’t miss what happened in Ways and Means last night, which is proposing a serious attack on dedicated public transportation funding.

10:44 - Amendment to restore the funding for Safe Routes to School, Transportation Enhancements.
Rep. Petri introduces the amendment restoring transportaiton enhancements. He says, “there might be an impression that these programs are 10% of a state’s highway funding. It’s really not the case.  These activities would account for about 2% of highway funds. It gives a lot of bang for the buck. There have been 17,000 enhancement projects completed since 1992. The National Association of Realtors support the amendment because these amenities add value to our neighborhoods. …Ensuring the safety of our children is in the national interest. More than half of all enhancement funds have gone toward bike and pedestrian projects, which provides a balance to our national transportation program. The National Heart Association is here campaigning for this amendment…because it helps us lead healthier lives.”

After Petri’s comments, there was a lot of debate on the amendment. Rep. Mica said, “let me just say that we have grown to a huge number of programs. We have significant mandates. This entire bill has tried to head in a different direction and devolved to the states to be able to do these programs that we’ve spoken of.  …While I favor may of the items that have been mentioned, I do not view this in any way detrimental to those states that want to do this. But we believe that it’s time to get away from the mandates and the set aisdes that we do and this is one of them. I will oppose this amendment.

Rep. Rahall signals his strong support for this amendment as a “quality of life amendment” and offers a strong rebuke to the last few years of TE-bashing, adding that “I’m sick and tired of this program being used by idealogues as a whipping boy…”

Rep. Shuster explains what could be summed up as the basic majority opinion on the amendment. “This is fundamental for what we’re trying to do in reform this program. We’re faced with declining balances in the trust fund. We have close to 5,000 bridges that need to be rebuilt [in Pennsylvania.]  …Spending money on bike paths is nice, but it’s a community based function. It’s not for the federal government up here in Washington to tell states that they must spend these monies. Also, these dollars going into these are people that use the highways and are paying for them. I rise in strong opposition.”

“This is just mean spirited,” says Rep. DeFazio.”To just say ‘no more regards for bikes, let’s just turn back the clock to pre-1980s.” He asks the committee members to look the kids, the cops and the parents in these communities in the eye and tell them, “I’m sorry, we can’t afford to buy your child a safe way to ride their bicycle to shool and live a healthy lifestyle.”

Rep. Lipinski reminds the committee that walking and cycling are valid forms of transportation. “The more people we have doing that, the less wear and tear, the less congestion on our roads. This is not just throwing something out for recretaion. This is truly transportation. We have to recognize that we’re never going to build enough roads to accomondate everyone. We need to encourage people to be taking other forms of transportation. We need to understand and recognize that this is transportation.

The amendment fails by a close vote, but with bipartisan support, at 29-27.

9:25 Rep. Nick Rahall, the ranking Democrat on the committee, opens with kind remarks for the Chairman, but quickly pivots into a fairly scathing critique of the bill and the process, including the Speaker of the House, whom he says has voted against every transportation bill while in Congress.

Rep. Rahall is clearly bothered by the fact that a 845-page bill was introduced only a few short days before the markup, making it difficult for members to fully read and digest the bill. He asks to see a show of hands of people who have read the full bill. Chairman Mica is overheard saying, “I’ve read most of it,” and Rep. DeFazio is asked how many hands he sees and he says “I can’t count that low.” Rep. Rahall suggests he and the minority are prepared to move to postpone the markup to Wednesday, February 8th to provide more time to analyze the bill.

“Flatlines funding when we need to provide greater investment in our infrastructure…Slashes and burns the federal role in safety oversight. Democrats are prepared to offer many amendments of the shortcomings in this bill.”

Chairman Mica notes that there will be no rolling votes during the day, which means that members will have to be present for votes throughout the day. This likely means that the markup could go on all day and well into the evening, with a few recesses throughout the day for votes on the House floor.

9:07: Chairman Mica opens by thanking and acknowledges the “bipartisan effort that went into this day.” Obviously, it’ll be interesting to see how the committee vote shakes out, because it could be a very partisan vote. He draws a contrast with Rep. Oberstar’s bill, that was well formed in his colleague’s mind before he ever took leadership of the committee, and pointed out how much time the committee spent in hearings on the road to hear what “the American People” want in a transportation bill before drafting this one.

He notes the importance of having a long-term bill, which the House has drafted, and says that “we also pay for that, which is different than in the past…We have to live within our means…It’s important to keep the [Highway] Trust Fund solvent for the forseeable future.” Along these lines, Rep. Mica takes a little shot at the Senate bill, which he says falls short by relying on “short term funding, short-term planning, short-term stability…”

He then ran through what he feels are the highlights of the bill. It consolidates 70 federal programs. “States end up with more net money…We eliminiate mandatory set-asides and allow states to set their own priorities.” We heard over and over again that they need to speed up the process.

“I think the American people after 8 extensions deserve the best from Congress and our Committee.”

Locate your Representative on the transportation committee below in the list below. Also note the key statistics on the number and percentage of deficient bridges in your district from the table!

Then call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your Representative. When a staffer picks up, you can share this message below with him or her, or first ask to speak to a legislative associate that handles transportation and share this message with them. (Don’t know what district you’re in? Use this tool.)

And then say something along these lines:

My name is [NAME] and I live in [PLACE]. I’m calling to ask Representative [NAME] to please vote for two amendments in Thursday’s transportation committee markup. Please vote for the amendment from Reps. Petri and Johnson to restore the dedicated funding that helps make streets safer for people on foot or bike, and secondly, please vote for a possible amendment requiring states to first repair their deficient bridges, unless their bridges are in good condition.

We need to require states to put a priority on fixing the country’s 69,000 bridges before spending money on new highways. There are [NUMBER] deficient bridges in the Representative’s Congressional district, according to a Taxpayers for Common Sense report. The House transportation bill must address this backlog.

Last year pedestrian deaths increased while vehicle deaths dropped. It makes no sense to cut the tiny slice of dedicated funding that helps make streets safer for everyone on foot or bike.

Thank you so much for your time.

Want to report your call? Leave us a note in the comments or just send us a short email.

Some conservative think tanks and transportation policy experts are opposing the idea — though not because they think we shouldn’t be drilling for more oil everywhere possible, but because they believe the principle of a “user fee” for the highway system is one worth protecting.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative/libertarian think tank, held a session today on Capitol Hill with a title that leaves little mystery about their position: “Don’t Drill And Drive: Weakening The “User-Pays” Highway Funding Principle Would Endanger Our Nation’s Transportation Infrastructure.”

…the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and Natural Resources Defense Council will hold a briefing to discuss the importance of preserving the “user-pays/user-benefits principle”— and why proposals that would tie infrastructure funding to expanded energy production threaten the future health of our nation’s transportation system. The panel will feature a diverse range of transportation policy analysts from free-market, fiscal watchdog, and environmental organizations to discuss various aspects of the deeply flawed “drilling for roads” proposal, as well as solutions to long-term funding problems.

Obviously, CEI opposes the measure for very different reasons than an environmental group like NRDC. But could there be some opposition to this funding plan on both sides of the ideological spectrum in the House when this bill is introduced Tuesday?

In the Senate, Republican Sen. Inhofe has already said that expecting new oil drilling revenues to pay for an immediate multi-year transportation bill isn’t a realistic funding solution.

“While Speaker Boehner’s idea may be a long-term revenue source for transportation infrastructure,” said Sen. Inhofe back in November, “we need to focus on the immediate problem of how we will fund a multi-year highway bill. …If this is how the House is able to move the bill forward then I applaud them. But we need money now for transportation; we can’t afford to wait.”

If the drilling proposal wasn’t already controversial enough in the House, Speaker Boehner offered this tidbit on one of the Sunday morning talk shows. Via E&E Publishing and former Streetsblog reporter Elana Schor:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced yesterday that he will seek to override the president’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a long-term transportation bill — if the oil link is not already advanced during bicameral payroll tax-cut talks. The move adds a second volatile issue to a typically noncontroversial infrastructure package that his chamber wants to pay for in part by expanding offshore and Alaskan drilling, which is opposed by most Democrats and the White House.

“If [Keystone XL is] not enacted before we take up the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act, it will be part of it,” Boehner said of the pipeline in an interview with ABC’s “This Week,” referring to the GOP’s title for its drilling-and-transportation package.

The House bill is expected to be released Tuesday in advance of Thursday’s committee markup.

So what’s in the bill? Politico has a copy of the leaked 14-page summary, but it covers the policy only in very broad strokes, so it’s not possible to reach any sort of real conclusions about the bill just yet.

One of the most notable aspects of the bill is the proposal to raise the billions needed to cover the yawning gap in anticipated gas tax revenues with money from increased oil drilling — an intent also illustrated by the title: “The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.” The fact that the bill was written entirely by committee Republicans and tied to such a controversial new revenue source could result in a bill that gets little Democratic support in committee or on the floor.

Leaving speculation behind, no specifics are offered as to where the drilling would take place or how much revenue it’s expected to raise. On the subject, the summary says, “By removing barriers to new energy production, this fiscally responsible proposal will create a new, sustainable, revenue stream for infrastructure improvements, lower energy costs, and create infrastructure and energy sector jobs across the country.” We’ll have to wait for details on which “barriers to energy production” will be removed and how much revenue might be created.

We’ll have much more on this in the week to come as the full text is released and we can take a closer look.

It’s encouraging to hear House leaders say they intend to move forward with adopting a multiyear investment plan for transportation infrastructure that moves away from a 30 percent cut and toward full funding. But attaching the transportation bill to deeply contentious drilling proposals could lead to partisan gridlock and sidetrack long overdue transportation legislation — a stark contrast to the transportation bill marked up in the Senate just last week with a unanimous bipartisan vote.

While the Speaker’s press conference this morning was very short on details about the length or price of the bill, they did make it clear that their intent is to try and cover the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund through expanded oil drilling and exploration. That plan would certainly face immediate opposition from Democrats and moderates in the House and Senate.

There are serious questions, however about the amount of funding that could be raised over the next five years through this approach. As Sen. James Inhofe — the Republican co-sponsor of the Senate’s bipartisan bill – has noted, it is unlikely drilling-related revenues would come close to closing the existing transportation funding gap, and would not be available for several years. (New oil drilling could bring in perhaps a billion dollars over the life of the energy bills, and not for several years, according to recent scoring by the Congressional Budget Office. The shortfall is well over $50 billion over the life of this bill.)

In his response, Sen. Inhofe made it clear that expecting new oil drilling revenues to pay for an immediate multi-year transportation bill isn’t a realistic funding solution for this bill.

“While Speaker Boehner’s idea may be a long-term revenue source for transportation infrastructure,” Inhofe said, “we need to focus on the immediate problem of how we will fund a multi-year highway bill. …If this is how the House is able to move the bill forward then I applaud them. But we need money now for transportation; we can’t afford to wait.”

Calling the transportation bill an “important Republican jobs initiative”, Rep. John L. Mica (R-FL), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, offered his priorities for authorization in a statement:

“It is my hope to mark up in the coming weeks a solid blueprint for the future of America’s transportation that will do the following: significantly streamline the process for projects by cutting red tape and unnecessary federal paperwork; consolidate duplicative federal transportation programs; provide flexibility, authority and responsibility to states and local governments to move transportation projects forward; and increase the ability to leverage financial resources and encourage more private sector participation in building infrastructure.”

Transportation for America has long advocated for the idea of tying the bill to an “oil fee” in the past. Our proposal was quite different, though, designed to ensure that any additional revenue from a fee on oil would increase the efficiency of the transportation system and help give people expanded options that can reduce the nation’s oil dependency. This idea received majority support from the public in a poll of ours, and two-thirds of those polled supported if it came with a cut in the tax at the pump.

Because details of the bill have not been released, it’s unknown whether any new revenue would be applied to a sound investment strategy. We look forward to an opportunity to review the draft legislation and will continue to work with transportation leaders in the House and Senate to see that a bill gets enacted as soon as possible.

The American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act will be H.R 7, a number reserved for one of the Speaker’s bills, when it moves sometime before the end of the year, according to the timeline presented today.

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill, or THUD, as its called, contained similar cuts for transit and road/bridge spending that we saw in Rep. Ryan’s budget earlier this year. Transit and highway spending both get cut proportionally, around 34 percent.

While cuts are proportional in those main two areas, other areas and innovative programs face deeper cuts.The innovative TIGER grants, TIGGER grants and high-speed rail programs are cut entirely.

The New Starts transit program, which essentially funds all new transit system construction, gets cut to $1.55 billion down from $2 billion in FY10. In addition, a policy tweak is made that requires state or local funds to make up more than 50 percent of any new grant agreements. Or put another way, the feds will no longer cover more than half of any New Starts transit project, exacerbating an existing gap between the share the government will pay for transit vs. highway projects. (Highway projects get around 80 percent of their funds from the federal government.)

Existing passenger rail service faces deep cuts of its own. Amtrak’s capital budget (new rolling stock, new lines, equipment, etc.) is cut by $24 million, but the operations budget is where Amtrak takes a big hit, going from $563 million to $227 million. On top of that, an important policy change will prevent Amtrak from using any of their operating funds on state-supported lines — lines where a state has partnered with Amtrak to increase passenger rail service and ridership. To put that change in perspective, in 2010 9 million rides were taken on state-supported routes.

Amtrak State-Supported routes, from the T&I Committee “A New Direction” report (pdf).

Another notable policy change is for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The bill prohibits HUD from using any funding for anything related to the Sustainable Communities Partnership with DOT and the EPA. Essentially, this bill would require HUD to stop coordinating with the other two agencies and go back to the outdated siloed approach on housing, ignoring the effects on and the impacts of transportation and the environment.

The silver lining is that it’s unlikely that this appropriations bill will make it through the full process to passage anytime soon. Instead, Congress will likely pass a continuing resolution (CR) before September 30 to stop the government from shutting down — which means at least for a while, the 2012 funding levels could be more in line with last year’s levels, preventing some of these cuts. Whether it passes or not, it’s important to note that this is the House appropriators opening position on transportation funding for next year.

Here’s a full list with details on the cuts.

• Cuts highway funding from ~$41B to $27B
• Cuts transit funding (excluding New Starts) from $8.3B to $5.3B
• Cuts New Starts from $1.6B to $1.55B and requires that any new grant agreement include at least at 50% non-federal share; Note, FY10 New Starts funding was $2B, separate cuts were made last year.
• Includes funding for Washington’s Metro system – $150M
• No funding for TIGER, HSR, or TIGGER (transit energy efficiency grants)
• Prohibits any new RRIF (a loan program like TIFIA for rail projects) loans or loan guarantees.
• Cuts Amtrak capital funding from $922M to $898M; FY10 funding was $1,002M
• Cuts Amtrak operating funding from $563M to $227M

The transportation bill extension. The current transportation bill expires at the end of September. Congress needs to pass another temporary extension — the 8th extension of the last bill — to give them the necessary weeks/months to hammer out a plan for a long-term transportation bill. The Senate could mark up a clean, four-month extension of the current bill as early as the end of this week. The House will likely take up the FAA authorization bill first since their last temporary agreement expires in the middle of the month. Indications are coming from both chambers and both parties that passing an extension shouldn’t be a problem, though promises like that may ring hollow in most ears these days.

A long-term transportation bill. As far as a long-term bill goes, you may remember, the House has already released their plan for a transportation bill that would run for the full six years, but would cut funding by 35 percent across the board. The Senate is still working on their plan for a two-year bill that would maintain current funding levels. They’re nearing the finish line on that plan, and they’ve at least announced a plan to mark up a two-year bill in committee sometime next week. If a timetable like that holds, the two-year Senate bill could make it through that chamber before Rep. Mica’s House bill sees action in the House.

The gas tax. After much prognostication, it doesn’t seem that there will be any widespread opposition to extending the gas tax in the House or Senate. The word around town is that a reauthorization of the gas tax will be folded into a “continuing resolution” that will be used to continue funding the government after the end of the month. (It’s unlikely that a proper budget or individual appropriations bills will pass before September 30th, meaning that the “CR” will extend last year’s funding levels, with some cuts, for another few months.)

The month of September will be a busy time with all these elements in play. Be sure to check back here or follow us on twitter to stay in the loop and find out what you can do to take action and weigh in with your members of Congress.

Transportation performance measures — and accountability for meeting them — are keys to improving the federal transportation program and ensuring that taxpayers’ funds are invested wisely. House committee staff confirmed that states will be held accountable for decisions through performance measures, which could be a significant step forward – depending on how the measures work.

But like so many other parts of the House proposal, the devil will remain in the details. A few key questions need to be answered:

What will the performance measures actually measure? If the measures only consider congestion and mobility, for example, will states be required to build larger highways without consideration of equity and environmental impacts? It is important that these performance measures are connected to improved system performance. If they are not, these measures simply become a tool to highlight the impact of past decisions, both good and bad. Or put another way, the targets need to be related to actually improving the condition of the system.

Will the measures help direct the flow of funds? For example, the outline states that the transit formula programs will incentivize performance by incorporating performance measures into the distribution formulas. Will highway programs be held to the same standard?

Will states actually be held accountable for meeting the targets? Committee staff indicated that states will be required to spend a portion of their highway, transit and highway safety funds in areas where they are under-performing. Will states need to analyze how proposed plans to spend funds will impact measures so elected officials and the public can understand the impacts of decisions before they are made?

Especially with a smaller amount of money to spend, ensuring those dollars are well spent is more important than ever. Setting a diverse range of performance targets and holding states accountable for meeting them is a smart way to get the most bang for our buck. The House bill makes a positive and necessary step in this direction, but the ultimate verdict will come with the details in the full bill text.