With help from Tanya Snyder
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— The House Transportation Committee’s surface bill is ready for its moment in the spotlight at today’s markup.
— Meanwhile, the other chamber is focused on new legislation responding to the Boeing 737 MAX crashes.
— CBP is staring down a $400 million budget shortfall due to a decline in international travel and the customs user fees that go with it.
IT’S WEDNESDAY: Thanks for tuning in to POLITICO’s Morning Transportation, your daily tipsheet on all things trains, planes, automobiles and ports. Get in touch with tips, feedback or song lyric suggestions at [email protected] or @samjmintz.
“Stop! / The train is riding / Down to the station where you lived / When we were school kids.”
LISTEN HERE: Follow MT’s playlist on Spotify. What better way to start your day than with songs (picked by us and readers) about roads, railways, rivers and runways
IT’S MARKUP DAY: The House Transportation Committee is lining up a historic markup today — not just because it will advance a $500 billion surface transportation bill, H.R. 2 (116), but because it’s “one of the first virtual markups in U.S. history,” as the committee noted, and undoubtedly the biggest.
Prepare for a long day(s): There are hundreds of amendments for the committee to consider, with 213 introduced and posted on the committee’s website as of late Tuesday. The markup is expected to last at least all day and could bleed into Thursday.
There are some big issues that might need some ironing out. New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority criticized the bill, saying it perpetuates a formula for handing out money that penalizes big systems like its own. As our Tanya Snyder notes in her story, it’s a “remarkable sour note for a bill that boosts transit funding by more than 50 percent overall.” MTA CEO Pat Foye met with Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) on Tuesday.
We’re still combing through the lengthy bill for noteworthy provisions, but one that popped up: The legislation would squash Amtrak’s contentious arbitration policy, incorporating language introduced by Democrats in the House and Senate earlier this year.
THE MINORITY: Republicans on the committee, who say they were shut out of crafting the bill, are now calling it the “My Way or the Highway Bill.” In addition to lining up dozens of amendments aimed at key segments of the bill, they’re also planning to introduce their own messaging legislation this week that will forgo the climate focus of DeFazio’s bill and prioritize flexibility for local governments and speeding project permitting.
THE WHITE HOUSE: The Trump administration is reportedly readying an “infrastructure proposal” of its own. The House and Senate have already put forward their own plans, with the Senate’s approved out of committee and the House’s on its way to do so this week. They’re gearing up now for what will be contentious conference negotiations during the end of this year and possibly into 2021.
The reported scope of the president’s proposal (nearly $1 trillion, according to Bloomberg) is probably fantasy. It’s more likely that the final surface authorization enacted will end up at less than half of that sum. And nobody in Congress has figured out how they’re paying for their own legislation — let alone double it.
The timeline: Joel Szabat, DOT’s acting undersecretary for policy, said the administration’s plan will be out soon. (“Before the members of this committee have the opportunity to ask me questions for the record,” he said at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday).
MAILBAG: Two letters went out from senators on highway funding, showing the start of a bipartisan consensus in the upper chamber. A group of 26 lawmakers from both parties wrote to the chamber’s leadership to emphasize that state transportation agencies will need $50 billion in the next Covid-19 response bill to move forward with projects and keep workers employed. And the second letter asks that any highway funding in the next Covid response bill be allocated by a calculation of states’ non-federal revenue — a nod to a recent analysis by the Eno Center’s Jeff Davis that showed the existing federal highway formulas wouldn’t fairly distribute money to states based what they’ve lost during the pandemic.
RESPONDING TO THE 737 MAX: Don’t forget there’s another important hearing today on the other side of the Capitol: The Senate Commerce Committee will hear from FAA Administrator Steve Dickson and Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya was killed in last year’s Boeing 737 MAX crash, on aircraft certification. The hearing will focus on bipartisan legislation responding to the crashes and the jet’s grounding.
The bill was formally introduced on Tuesday by Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). The legislation was strengthened from an earlier Republican-only version after a push by the crash victims’ families, but even this new measure (which requires the FAA to sign off on employees that manufacturers designate to take part in certification work) doesn’t go far enough, they say.
“The bill still lacks teeth,” said Chris Moore, whose daughter Danielle died in last year’s crash. The families want lawmakers to take away more certification responsibilities from companies like Boeing and put them in the hands of the FAA. The families were initially rebuffed when they pushed Commerce to let them testify at the hearing, but Commerce ultimately agreed at the last minute to let Stumo testify.
FURLOUGH FEARS AT CBP: The agency is in a dire financial state as the drop in international air traffic has cut deep into its user fee revenue. As your MT host reports, Tony Reardon, president of the union representing CBP employees, said the agency is facing a $400 million shortfall, which could lead to furloughs if Congress doesn’t act. The customs fees fund 40 percent of the agency’s operations budget, including 8,000 officer positions, Reardon said.
By the way: Another union head, who represents TSA workers, weighed in on whether security screeners would be well-equipped to conduct temperature checks at airports. “They do an outstanding job at making sure that the public fly safely, but I don’t know how well they would fare if they had to become a medical professional,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
NORTH OF THE BORDER: The U.S.-Canada border will remain closed to non-essential travel through at least July 21 after the two governments agreed to extend existing closures, as POLITICO’s Maura Forrest reports from Ottawa.
DOC OF THE DAY: A new report from the groups Energy Innovation and the Environmental Defense Fund tries to quantify the value of California’s recent advanced clean trucks rule, which would require 60 percent of new medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold in the state to be zero emission vehicles by 2035. The numbers they came up with are big ones: $7 billion to $12 billion in overall economic savings, a reduction in CO2 emissions by more than 17 million metric tons, and a boost for companies developing electric trucks, such as Tesla.
Highways and Transit Subcommittee ranking member Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) has a new communications director: Aaron DeGroot, who’s based in the district and spent the last five years in Illinois GOP politics, started on Monday. Davis’ former comms director Ashley Phelps has moved over to the House Administration Committee, where Davis is also ranking member.
Two experts on vehicle greenhouse gas emissions are moving to a new group. Dan Becker and Jim Gerstenzang had long run at the Safe Climate Campaign at the Center for Auto Safety, a Ralph Nader-founded group that focuses on broader auto safety issues. Becker and Gerstenzang have switched over to the Center for Biological Diversity, where they will run the Safe Climate Transport Campaign to push back on the Trump administration’s rollback of auto emissions standards and advocate for more electric vehicles.
— “Airlines ban alcohol on planes in response to Covid-19.” CNN.
— “Tesla’s Model S is the first electric car with 400-mile range EPA rating.” The Verge.
— “Peak shipping season runs aground as ocean lines pull capacity.” Wall Street Journal.
— “CDC now recommends driving alone. But what if you don’t have a car?” NPR.
— “China warns Canada after officials report pests found in lumber shipments.” POLITICO Pro.
DOT appropriations run out in 105 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 1,201 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 105 days.
