WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, led a group of her Republican colleagues in highlighting their concerns with the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) recently published notice of proposed rulemaking.
This new FHWA proposal would obligate state and local transportation organizations to use federal funding from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to measure transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.
As the senators note in their letter to FHWA, such a rule would be onerous, impractical, and contrary to the explicit, bipartisan intent of the IIJA.
“Imposition of these burdensome, and potentially unlawful, regulations…comes at a time when states are struggling to deal with the price and availability of construction materials and record inflation-economic headwinds we have not faced in decades. Your department’s focus should be on helping to alleviate these burdens so we can take full advantage of the opportunity before us to fulfill the bipartisan vision of the IIJA and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure,” said the senators.
Read the full text of the letter HERE.
Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also joined the letter.
BACKGROUND:
Congress passed the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on November 15th, 2021.
The FHWA’s notice of proposed rulemaking National Performance Management Measurements; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Measure was announced on July 15th.
This is not the first time the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration have pursued a bureaucratic, partisan proposal that runs counter to how Congress intended for IIJA to be implemented.
In February, Sen. Fischer joined half the Republican conference in urging Secretary Buttigieg to rescind or substantially revise a memorandum to ensure the agency implements only what Congress intended.
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