Changes Loom for Makeup of House, Senate Transportation Panels in Next Congress

AASHTO Journal, 7 November 2014

Capitol dome.
Photo by Mario Olivero, AASHTO.

The key committees that draft transportation legislation in Congress, and oversee many federal transportation-related agencies, face significant makeovers after the Nov. 4 elections.

The biggest changes will come in the Senate, where Republicans take control of the committee process for the first time since 2006 and can assert more direct control in writing legislation.

For laws authorizing programs funded by the Highway Trust Fund, three Senate committees have jurisdiction, led by Environment and Public Works with its sway over highway issues that account for most trust fund spending. The Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee writes the safety pieces of any highway bill, while Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs handles the transit section.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has chaired EPW since Democrats took control of the Senate in 2007. During the 2012 runup to passing the two-year MAP-21 highway and transit bill, her ranking member was James Inhofe, R-Okla., who helped negotiate with House Republicans to get a final bill both chambers could pass.

Inhofe is expected to take the gavel come January since David Vitter, R-La., the ranking member at EPW since January 2013, is running for governor next year and has said that is the last public office he’ll seek.

Alabama Republican Richard Shelby is expected to chair the Banking Committee with its transit jurisdiction, American Banker reports. That will be part of a series of musical chairs at that panel, where outgoing Chairman Tim Johnson, D-S.D., is retiring from the Senate and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has been ranking Republican in recent years.

The Commerce Committee is now chaired by Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who is also retiring. Ranking Republican John Thune, S.D., will likely take the gavel, news reports say, but there will be lots of changes in the subcommittee lineup on both sides of the aisle. Commerce also takes the lead on rail and aviation legislation, both of which are expected to come up in 2015.

Things are somewhat simpler in the House, where the large Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has jurisdiction over a much broader range of highway, transit, marine and aviation issues, and Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., is on course to chair it for another term.

Shuster is coming off a first term that included passage of the first water projects bill in seven years and introduction of a major rail authorization bill.

But that panel will see significant changes in its makeup coming out of the November elections. Ranking Democrat Nick Rahall of West Virginia was defeated for re-election, ending a 38-year House career and a solid working relationship that Shuster and Rahall had developed.

Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., is next in line of seniority and has begun seeking support of other Democrats at T&I to be ranking member, but John Garamendi, D-Calif., is challenging DeFazio for the position.

Rahall is the committee’s second consecutive Democratic leader to lose re-election in a strong Republican year at the polls; former Chairman Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., was defeated in the 2010 Republican wave.

Since T&I is a large committee, it often has a lot of personnel changes after elections and this balloting has teed up some more. Among them: Committee members Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., and Steve Southerland, R-Fla., both lost re-election; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., moves off that panel and takes a Senate seatĀ in January, and Tom Petri, R-Wis., who chairs the Highways and Transit subcommittee, is retiring. Also leaving is Michael Michaud, D-Maine, who did not seek re-election to his House seat and lost a bid to become his state’s governor.

Besides those program authorizing committees, others that most affect transportation programs are the appropriations panels that set annual spending levels for most programs, and the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the House and Finance in the Senate that mustĀ find money to pay for any fix to the Highway Trust Fund. They face many changes as well in the next Congress.

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