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Senate Passes Highway Bill

By Beacon Staff

With strong bipartisan support, the U.S. Senate approved a two-year, $109 billion transportation and infrastructure bill that Montana Sen. Max Baucus helped develop and push forward. The Highway Bill passed 74-22 on Wednesday.

Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, praised the legislation as a significant investment in the nation’s transportation systems. The bill would send roughly $400 million a year to Montana for transportation funding, which translates into almost 14,000 jobs a year in the state and aids efforts for improving safety on rural highways, Baucus’ office said.

“Highways are our lifeblood in Montana, which is why this bill is so important for good-paying jobs, our small businesses and our families,” Baucus said prior to the bill’s passage. “There’s very little under the Big Sky that doesn’t depend on our highways which is why I’ve fought so hard to get the highway bill to the finish line.”

The House of Representatives has until March 31, when federal funding from the Highway Trust Fund expires, to pass its own separate bill. But recent efforts have reportedly stalled and support has been wavering, meaning there is a growing possibility that the House could simply pass the Senate bill into law.

The legislation maintains national funding at current levels for two years, reforms the nation’s transportation programs in an effort to improve efficiency and provides assistance for new infrastructure projects.

An administrator in the Montana Department of Transportation praised the bill.

“We are pleased with today’s Senate action,” Lynn Zanto, the planning administrator for MDT, said. The bill “is a positive step forward towards providing longer term certainty for improving our roads, bridges, public transportation systems and ensuring safe travel in Montana. We’re hopeful the momentum will carry into the House and that final passage of a transportation bill at current funding levels is not too distant into the future.”

One of Baucus’ noteworthy amendments, the Secure Rural Schools Act, was included in the bill. The program distributes $346 million to 700 counties in 41 states, a 5 percent reduction from last year.

Montana is one of the top five states that receive funding through the program. Last year the state received roughly $50 million to help counties fund schools, law enforcement, roads and other services.

The federal payments to counties with national forests and other federal timberlands began in 2000 to make up for cuts in logging prompted by protections for fish and wildlife. Counties get a share of revenues collected on federal lands.

Another amendment attached to the Highway Bill would use fees from oil and gas leasing in federal waters to help purchase and protect lands across the country, Baucus’ office said. The senator had a provision added to the transportation bill that would fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund through 2022 with $700 million for 2013 and 2014.

“This amendment is about protecting our outdoor heritage and supporting the Land and Water Conservation Fund which has a long history of keeping Montana the ‘Last Best Place,’” Baucus said.

Baucus said he would have preferred the Highway Bill to extend longer than two years to “provide greater certainty.” The New York Times reported that senators kept the duration of the bill short because paying for programs would be difficult with dropping gasoline tax revenues, the key funding source behind the federal Highway Trust Fund.

“This is a big jobs bill and probably will be the major jobs bill of the year,” Baucus said in a press conference on the Senate floor following the vote. “There will be other legislation to affect jobs, but this legislation maintains and creates about 2.8 million jobs.”

Failing to pass a new Highway Bill could have resulted in the U.S. losing nearly $340 billion in potential economic growth, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Transportation Performance Index.