I posted last week that House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica was expected to release a draft of a proposed federal transportation bill last Friday, and he did.
According to Transportation Issues Daily, House Transportation Committee members received a copy of the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act late last week and, interestingly, they were individually marked. The speculation is that was done to track leaks, as some text from the bill had already been leaked to the public previous to it’s official release.
The House Transportation committee is expected to release bill text to the public tomorrow, and debate and pass it out of Committee on Thursday. The House Ways and Means Committee, charged with writing the funding provisions of the bill, is tentatively scheduled to act on Friday.
Those activities put the full House on track to debate and vote on the bill during the week of February 13. Don’t get too excited that we’re finally going to have a federal transportation bill though (hey, this is exciting stuff to folks like me), it’s a huge battle for the House and Senate to negotiate a final bill before the March 31 expiration of SAFETEA-LU. And USDOT Secretary LaHood last week reminded transportation stakeholders that Congress is very unlikely to pass a multi-year transportation bill in 2012.