By Ron Thaniel
July 15, 2002

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed legislation June 4, resetting TEA-21's highway spending baseline to $28.9 billion for FY 2003. This amount represents an increase of $5.7 billion over the President's proposed budget of $23.3 billion.

This adjustment was the result of the Revenue Aligned Budget Authority (RABA) calculations for FY 2003. The RABA mechanism requires highway funding to be adjusted each year to reflect the most recent estimates of revenue collections. For FY 2003, the RABA mechanism would have resulted in a reduction of $4.4 billion below the authorized baseline level.

On May 14, the House passed the Highway Funding Restoration Act (H.R. 3694). This legislation sets highway funding at $27.7 billion, the authorized amount for FY 2003 under TEA-21.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors strongly supports H.R. 3694, and its Senate counterpart S. 1917, and has been actively working with Congress to help move the legislation.

In a letter sent to Congress in February, the Conference of Mayors joined seven other groups representing local officials in stating that, "The impact of such a cut will be devastating to state and local transportation programs and to the economy."