Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users

The Legislative and Political Process

As with TEA-21, the two major debates concerning SAFETEA-LU were the total size of federal funding and how to distribute that funding among the states. Donor states, mostly fast-growing southern states, wanted the TEA-21 guarantee of 90.5 percent return from funds contributed to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) increased to 95 percent. Donee states generally had no problem with this as long as their funding was not cut. Many members of Congress wanted to increase the overall size of the bill substantially so that it would provide adequate funding for both donor and donee states. However, this was impractical without increasing the gas tax or adding general fund revenues, both measures President George W. Bush's administration was unwilling to take.

Bush's original SAFETEA 2003 bill, introduced in May 2003, concentrated on striking a balance between conservative pressure to avoid spending and public pressure to create jobs through infrastructure construction. This proposal eliminated most discretionary highway-grant programs to reduce the possibility that states and localities would match projects to available pots of federal [Page 1196]money rather than prioritize based on transportation needs. Bush's bill proposed spending $247 billion over six years, and he threatened to veto any bill that went much higher.

Despite TEA-21's expiration in September 2003, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee did not have a preliminary version of the bill ready for markup until November. In February 2004, the Senate passed its SAFETEA bill, allocating $318 billion; in April, the House of Representatives passed a TEA-LU version for $275 billion.

However, the conference committee hit gridlock trying to negotiate a compromise. By September, the House introduced another six-month TEA-21 extension, signaling that no new bill would emerge until after the 2004 election. After starting over in 2005, the final conference's work was to find a middle-ground number between the House's $284 billion bill, favored by the White House, and the Senate's $295 billion bill. The president removed his veto threat, mainly because changes to the tax treatment of ethanol fuel meant the HTF expected $18.9 billion in additional revenue.

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