The House overwhelmingly approved a five-year, $305 billion highway bill Thursday, advancing the first long-term national transportation spending package in a decade and cementing an early legislative achievement in the Speaker Paul Ryan era.
The 359 – 65 vote comes one day before federal infrastructure funding runs out, and sets up a likely Senate vote to pass the measure before Friday’s deadline. All dissenting votes were cast by Republican lawmakers.
The White House has said that President Obama is planning to sign the bill.
The 1,300-page bill, paid for with gas tax revenue and a package of $70 billion in offsets from other areas of the federal budget, calls for spending approximately $205 billion on highways and $48 billion on transit projects over the next five years. It also reauthorizes the controversial Export-Import Bank’s expired charter until 2019.
Dubbed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or the FAST Act, the bill formally reauthorizes the collection of the 18.4-cents-per-gallon gas tax that is typically used to pay for transportation projects. The $70 billion “pay-fors” would close a $16 billion deficit in annual transportation funding that has developed as U.S. cars have become more fuel-efficient.
If enacted, the package would reflect the first transportation funding legislation to last longer than two years since 2005.
