Transportation Weekly
The U.S. Senate adjourned for the week at 11:40 a.m. today without taking action on legislation to provide 30-day extensions of programs set to expire at midnight on February 28. Accordingly, expenditure authority for the Highway Trust Fund will shut down at that time.
Contrary to what we reported earlier today, expenditure authority out of the HTF for administrative expenses expires 24 hours after the rest of the expenditure authority from the Trust Fund, so furloughs at FHWA, FMCSA and NHTSA would not take place until Tuesday morning. But there will be no payments to states or transit agencies out of the Trust Fund beginning on Monday morning.
Once FHWA employees are furloughed, they will no longer be present at work to approve projects funded from the general fund, either, including new projects under the ARRA stimulus law. FHWA is required by law to redistribute unobligated ARRA highway formula funding on Tuesday, March 2, but it is unclear if this will take place if all FHWA employees are out on furlough.
The Senate will be back in session on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. (though there will be no recorded votes until 12:15 p.m. Tuesday afternoon), but unless Senator Bunning changes his mind, the rules of the Senate will allow him to drag out action on any bill to extend the Trust Fund or other programs until the end of next week (the earliest a cloture petition on H.R. 4961 could be filed is Tuesday, which would mean a cloture vote Thursday and bill passage on Friday). The only other option would be for the House to pass the Reid “jobs bill” (H.R. 2847) as is, which is unlikely. Any House amendment to H.R. 2847 would require a new cloture process in the Senate which could take until the end of next week.
Posted on
Fri, February 26, 2010
by Crystal Drwenski