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— Democrats are proposing a massive Highway Trust Fund bailout, but they say it’s more of an opening salvo than a final offer.
— The House’s infrastructure bill includes several pieces of vehicle safety legislation that have been top priorities of lawmakers and advocates for years.
— Meanwhile, in its airport funding section, the bill looks to avoid the mistakes of the CARES Act.
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PEAK INFRASTRUCTURE: Just like that, Democrats have an infrastructure bill. The text of the $1.5 trillion legislation, given the symbolically weighty bill number of H.R. 2, was released on Monday. As we’ve reported previously, the surface transportation bill advanced by the House Transportation Committee last week is the centerpiece, but this is much more than a transportation bill. It addresses tax changes, energy and water infrastructure investments, housing, schools and more.
The money question: The bill proposes addressing the insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund with a massive transfer from the general fund. As far as bailouts go, this is a biggie: The $145.3 billion is more than the sum of every other transfer to the Highway Trust Fund since 2008 combined. But, as our Tanya Snyder puts it in her story, it’s also “less a reflection of the party’s position and more a warning of what lawmakers will end up with in the absence of serious bipartisan negotiations on revenue.” A House Ways and Means Committee aide told POLITICO the bill is the “opening salvo” of a conversation about how to pay for infrastructure, a debate that will dominate surface transportation negotiations going forward.
It also has some new pieces of transportation language, most notably a safety section that originated in the Energy and Commerce Committee. As Tanya reports, the bill includes provisions aimed at preventing deaths from hot cars, keyless ignition, drunk and distracted driving and more. It’s a collection of safety advocates’ biggest priorities from the past few years, some of which have been on E&C’s radar for a while but have yet to be enacted. Consumer Reports called it “transformative and necessary.”
One provision would mandate crash-avoidance technologies in all new passenger vehicles. Another would require vehicle headlights that reduce glare and automatically adapt to oncoming traffic or curves in the road. And a third would require new cars to include technology to detect the presence of a person in the backseat when a driver is exiting and provide a warning. There’s even more, and Pros can read about it here.
What’s next: The Rules Committee said on Monday that it’s “likely” to meet next week on the bill.
LEARNING FROM THE CARES ACT: The infrastructure bill would also send money to airports — but not without addressing the mess that was made of airport funding in the CARES Act, H.R. 748 (116). First of all, the supplemental airport funds (which start with $3 billion in 2021 and increase annually through 2025) would be allocated based solely on enplanements, rather than the CARES debt-ratio formula that led to tiny airports getting huge windfalls, as we reported earlier this year. And secondly, airports that benefited disproportionately from CARES (specifically, those that got more than four times their annual operating expenses) would not be able to benefit from the money under this legislation for the next two years.
Speaking of airports: Los Angeles International Airport is launching a first-in-the-nation pilot of thermal camera technology, using the devices to screen both arriving and departing passengers.
Here’s how it will work: “If a voluntary participant is identified as having an elevated body temperature, a medical professional near the camera operator will approach the identified person and request a secondary screening using a handheld, non-contact thermometer,” LAX said in its release on Monday. Departing passengers will be advised not to travel (though not physically stopped from doing so) and arriving passengers “may be referred to CDC staff on site,” according to the airport. LAX will evaluate three different types of cameras during the pilot, with input from TSA, the CDC, airlines and county health officials.
The move is an example of the kind of ad-hoc patchwork of airport and airline measures that have popped up as the federal government has declined to set any sort of mandatory standard to help prevent the virus from spreading via air travel.
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP, SPECIAL PRIVILEGES? Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee are probing the visit by conservative British politician Nigel Farage to Oklahoma for President Donald Trump’s rally over the weekend. As the lawmakers note in a letter to acting DHS chief Chad Wolf, the Trump administration’s restrictions on travel to the U.S. were waived for Farage after his entry was declared “in the national interest,” according to CBP.
“The decision of the Trump Administration to admit Mr. Farage to the United States to enable him to attend a campaign rally at a time when most travel from the United Kingdom to the U.S. has been suspended raises numerous troubling questions, as does the claim that such travel was in the national interest,” the committee wrote.
THE TRANSIT LOBBY: A recently formed coalition of private transit companies, which won successes before even officially announcing its formation, is going for more. The North American Transit Alliance has hired Akin Gump to lobby for it, per POLITICO Influence. Former Rep. Vic Fazio, who worked on transportation appropriations while in Congress, will lobby on behalf of the group along with three others from Akin.
Public transit agencies need more help from Congress, too. The Metropolitan Transit Authority has already used up nearly three-quarters of the $4 billion it received from the CARES Act earlier this year, POLITICO’s Danielle Muoio reports from New York. It will all be gone by July. “The MTA is facing financial calamity — I can’t be any clearer than that,” MTA Chairman Pat Foye said on Monday.
What’s next: The MTA is still pushing the federal government to give it another $3.9 billion in funding in the next stimulus package, Danielle writes.
— “Canadian airlines push Ottawa for strategic reopening.” POLITICO Pro Canada.
— “Passenger at LAX removed from Frontier Airlines flight for not wearing mask.” KABC.
— “Air Canada raises additional C$1.23 billion.” Reuters.
— “Passengers alleging racial discrimination sue American Airlines over Black man’s removal from flight.” CNN.
— “Apple is turning your iPhone into a digital car key.” CNBC.
DOT appropriations run out in 99 days. The FAA reauthorization expires in 1,195 days. Highway and transit policy is up for renewal in 99 days.
