Transportation bill offers rare opportunity for bipartisanship
By Nelson Balido
Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas With fights over everything from health care to foreign policy to transcontinental pipelines folks in Washington arent agreeing on much these days. And those are just the disagreements between the parties.
Tune in to a Republican presidential primary debate and youre likely to see more sparks fly than you would on the House floor.
And though the presidents State of the Union speech was an aggressive and bold look at the future we must focus on what needs to be accomplished right away.
Bold words need to be turned into action by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.
Word out of Washington is that
the House will soon take up its version of a long-term transportation funding bill.
But every now and then we get a small ray of bipartisanship in the daily squabbles allowing everyone to find a small piece of common ground. We might be seeing such a case in the transportation arena.
Having closed out 2011 with an unclear picture of a way forward on transportation this comes as welcome news for border communities and trade advocates as we seek to preserve the Coordinated Border Infrastructure program which we believe should be included in any transportation package. CBI dollars drawn down by border state departments of transportation are used to fund infrastructure projects that are critical to trade facilitation.
Last month more than 110 House Republicans and Democrats
signed on to a letter to President Obama urging his support for a transportation bill. With the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee having passed
its version of the bill in November it looks like were getting closer to getting a deal done.
But as with anything of this scale there are still significant challenges on the road ahead. Both the Senate and House must come up with significant funding streams (or big cuts) to make their proposals work. The Senate has to
find $12 billion to make its two-year plan work while the House would likely need to
find over $70 billion to fund its five-year plan. Considering how tight the federal budget is those dollars wont be easy to come by.
And the Border Trade Alliance has serious concerns with the way the CBI program is treated under the Senate version of the bill. CBI is preserved but without the mandates on border state DOTs to spend the dollars in the border region. Were working hard to ensure that CBI dollars stay in the border region.
There are some bright spots however. Under the Senate version CBI dollars could be spent on
freight rail infrastructure something that is not possible under the current incarnation of the program.
The BTA joined a coalition of business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that recently wrote to the House and Senate calling for the passage of a transportation bill before the current law expires March 31.
In
the letter we write that ...the economic opportunities that a well-crafted measure could afford and emerging political consensus for advancing such an effort we believe it is time for all involved parties to come together and craft a final product.
When I speak in Washington D.C. or in communities along our nations borders whether it is one-on-one or in a group setting my message remains the same: There is no greater or faster return on infrastructure investment than that offered by our land ports of entry on both borders.
The horrendous wait times of people waiting to deliver goods and services through commercial lanes or travelers in line for hours waiting to visit our country and spend money must be alleviated one way or another.
Not every issue in Washington has to get bogged down partisan bickering. Theres enough goodwill surrounding the need and desire to upgrade the nations - and the border regions - aging infrastructure to make significant progress.
Heres hoping Congress and the White House dont miss this opportunity.
Nelson Balido is president of the Border Trade Alliance.
