First, a recap: Last month, transportation officials began to worry about what would happen come Sept. 30, the date that the latest surface transportation legislation expires. The previous bill, known as SAFETEA-LU, expired two years ago, and it's been alive through a series of temporary extensions ever since. The legislation funds the country's highways and transit.
Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate, meanwhile, released outlines for their long-term bills, earlier this summer, but they were wildly different. Eventually, it became clear that they wouldn't have time to settle their differences before the current law expired, and even President Obama stepped in and urged legislators to pass a temporary extension.
This week, the House passed its extension, and the Senate was expected to do yesterday.
Enter Republican Sen. Tom Coburn.
The senator introduced a hold -- a parliamentary technique he is famous for using -- to stop the legislation in the Senate. His beef is with part of the surface transportation program that requires states to spend a portion of their federal transportation funds on "transportation enhancements" or TEs.
TE projects include quality-of-life improvements such as pedestrian walkways, bike paths, and landscaping. The feds spent about $800 million per year under SAFETEA-LU. Generally, federal funding pays for about 80 percent of a TE project's costs, according to the Department of Transportation.
But Coburn is trying to eliminate any requirement that states spend money on these projects, arguing that their are more pressing concerns than such "niceties." Advocates for TE programs say they improve local economies, protect the environment and improve communities.
"Dr. Coburn believes we need to prioritize bridge repair over beautification and bike paths,"Coburn spokesman John Hart tells Governing. "He will use all procedural means at his disposal to force the Senate to debate and make choices between these competing priorities.
House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor endorsed the elimination of the TE spending requirements in a letter to the president last week.
Coburn's move also jeopardizes the future of the Federal Aviation Administration, which loses its authority Friday. Without an extension, the agency would partially shut down, yet again, after it already did so earlier this summer. The FAA bill is being linked to the highway bill in the Senate.
