As Republicans assumed the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, party leaders passed a package of proposed amendments to House Rules that could impact the future of transportation spending.

Under the previous House rule, members could not offer a bill, joint resolution, amendment or conference report that reduced spending levels for highway, highway safety, and public transportation below the funding amounts that are specified in authorization law (in this case, extensions of SAFETEA-LU). This rule holds regardless of the source of the revenues that support those spending levels.

In the House Rules package for the 112th Congress, Republicans changed the rule. The change would eliminate the provision in House Rules which requires appropriations funding for highways and transit to be identical to levels set in authorizing law. This would create opportunities to use user fee and transit general fund resources for non-transportation purposes. For example, the new rule would allow members to offer amendments to direct highway and transit resources to other purposes, such as deficit reduction.

Adoption of the new rule could endanger future levels of funding for public transportation programs by eliminating the current guarantee that ensures that user fees deposited into the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) are used for transit purposes. The guarantee was put in place in 1998 to end abuses of the trust fund, and has resulted in almost 100 percent of funds authorized for transit programs being appropriated on an annual basis.