But Montana Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, long a champion of the alpine highway's reconstruction, insists his plan will have no impact whatsoever on other highway jobs.
“Someone clearly didn't do their homework,” Baucus spokeswoman Sara Kuban
Kuban was referring to ongoing efforts in the House that would quash a Baucus request for the money, but she could just as easily have been talking about the Sun Road fix itself.
The $50 million, Baucus has said, was authorized in the most recent national highway bill, intended to begin a multi-year reconstruction of Going-to-the-Sun Road. The road, built in the late 1920s and early 1930s, has never received a comprehensive overhaul, and engineers have warned of “catastrophic failure” if large portions are not shored up.
In recent years, park officials have nibbled at the problems as budgets have allowed, literally tacking the highway back onto the cliff face in some places. A complete reconstruction has been planned, with an estimated price tag of $150 million.
Baucus was instrumental in securing the first $50 million installment, using his seniority in the Senate as clout to win an authorization through the federal highway bill. He worked with the Federal Highway Administration, he said, to craft the very language the agency now says is unclear.
In fact, the agency contends that although the money was authorized, it cannot be appropriated due to the murky language in the highway bill. In essence, FHA told Baucus there was no money.
Baucus - who has said the road is vital to the regional tourism economy and has called Glacier Park “the crown jewel of the continent” - proposed what he called a “fix,” and after much discussion the Senate approved his proposal May 4.
The measure affixed the missing $50 million onto an emergency supplemental spending bill, legislation President Bush warned he would veto if Congress packed it with too much pork.
Specifically, the Baucus proposal would “rescind” unused contract authority already approved in the highway bill - in other words, would tap money approved by the bill but not spent by the states.
Baucus insisted his project was not pork, in the usual sense, because it already had been through the committee process and would require no “new” money. He was, he said, only tidying up a bit of legislative housekeeping, clarifying congressional intent by cleaning up the mess caused by the imprecise language of the original highway bill.
But after Senate approval, the measure still had to pass muster in the House, where conservatives have vowed to slice any fat from the emergency legislation.
Nevertheless, Baucus predicted victory, saying it was “quite likely” to clear the House specifically because it would not affect highway appropriations in any other state. And this week, the senator went so far as to mail out a flier to Flathead Valley residents declaring the snafu fixed, and promising to continue the fight to fully restore the road.
That mailer, however, may have been premature.
Republican Rep. JoAnn Davis represents parts of suburban Washington, D.C., that rely heavily on transportation money. And she has distributed a letter asking members of a House-Senate conference, where the legislation is being discussed, to strip out the provision, saying it would “adversely affect every state in the country.”
Chris Connelly, Davis' chief of staff, said Tuesday that it appears the $50 million would be taken from other states' transportation funds.
In Baucus' office, however, Kuban said the letter is incorrect, insisting “the states will not be impacted by the rescission.” Congressional committees, she said, “routinely rescind unused contract authority without impacting the states.”
Baucus worked with the Federal Highway Administration in crafting the original appropriation, she said, and that agency approved the cost.
“However, now the FHA is going back on their word and saying that the language in the highway bill wasn't specific enough,” she said. “All Max's provision does is add the language needed to release the dollars for the Going-to-the-Sun Road.”
Baucus, meanwhile, has taken other, more politically expedient routes to securing the funds, including holding up a White House nomination to head the FHA until the “promised” money is released.
Earlier this spring, Baucus told FHA nominee Richard Capka “we have to be sure that we get that full $50 million, or else we'll have to spend time discussing your nomination.”
He has dug his heels in, he said, “because I worked too hard to secure these dollars for the road to let them slip away now. Congress approved $50 million for the Sun Road and that's what we're going to get.”
If he's going to get it in the emergency spending bill now before the House, however, he'll need to overcome opposition that portrays his request as pork at best, and as a threat to national highway coffers at worst.
That help, he hopes, will come from close to home.
“I'm sure Congressman (Denny) Rehberg (R-Mont.) will do what he can in the House to stop this false letter from being circulated,” Kuban said.
But Rehberg spokesman Todd Shriber said that Baucus' office had not contacted them about the issue.
“If they had, we may have been able to help them avert these mistakes,” he said. “Fixing his mistake is a near impossibility. It's a little late to be putting lipstick on a pig and not expect it to squeal.”
Derek Hunter, a spokesman for Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., agreed that it won't be easy. Burns is a member of the House-Senate conference.
“We understand it's going to be a tough fight convincing 98 other members of the Senate and 434 members of the House to give up their own transportation funds to correct this mistake,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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