MITA has recently learned, through our national affiliate ARTBA, that the incoming House Republican majority unveiled its proposed rules for operating the chamber in 2011 and 2012. Included in this proposed package is a repeal of the guaranteed funding requirement for annual highway investment.

According to a press release from the House Rules Committee Republicans under this change: “Highway funding, with some exceptions, will now be treated as other general spending and therefore be subject to any member attempts to reduce the spending.”

This proposal, if approved, would allow Congress to return to the pre-TEA-21 days where highway investment was held below incoming HTF revenues to offset spending in other parts of the federal budget.

Republicans will vote on this package, and amendments to it, on Tuesday, January 4, 2011. The only way this package will be modified is if House Republicans hear from their constituents about the damage this would do to the state transportation programs and the transportation construction industry.

You can reach the Capitol Hill office of current Members of Congress by calling ARTBA’s Action Hotline at 1-888-448-2782.

Please tell your House Republican current and incoming members the following information:

• The proposed House Rules change with respect to highway investment should be dropped because it would break the pledge with motorists by allowing federal gas tax revenues to be withheld instead of invested in transportation improvements.

• The plan would inject further uncertainty into an already destabilized U.S. transportation construction marketplace where unemployment is in excess of 18 percent— twice the national average.

• The 112th Congress should focus on enacting a multi-year reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program that creates jobs and boosts the economy, not on procedural maneuvers that make it easier to cut highway investment.