See How Your Politicians Voted
Title: Transportation Authorization Bill
Vote Smart's Synopsis:
Vote to pass a bill that authorizes $286.5 billion over six years in appropriations for highways, public transit, and safety programs, as well as to create other public works programs.
Highlights:
- Appropriates $32.55 billion for surface transportation programs.
- Appropriates $30.54 billion for the national highway system.
- Appropriates $25.15 billion for interstate maintenance programs.
- Appropriates $21.61 billion for bridge construction and repair programs.
- Appropriates $8.61 billion for congestion mitigation and air quality improvement programs.
- Appropriates $833 million for the Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program (Sec. 1101).
- Guarantees that states will receive 90.5 percent for FY '05-'06 total highway spending back from the federal government gasoline taxes, with increases to 91.5 percent in FY 07 and 92 percent in FY '08 (Sec. 1104).
- Establishes grants for states that have and enforce a law that prohibits the use of racial profiling in traffic stops (Sec. 1906).
- Calls for an assessment of the frequency of refusal of blood alcohol content (BAC) tests and establishes a program to increase the amount of check points nationwide and the penalties for failing or refusing a BAC test (Sec. 2003).
- Establishes grants for states that enact and enforce primary seat belt laws that allows police officers to pull over a driver for the sole reason of not using a seat belt (Sec. 2005).
- Establishes separate grants for States who maintain buses that run on alternative fuels, develop a transportation service to assist welfare recipients to get to and from work, or create programs to meet the special needs of the elderly and those with disabilities (Secs. 3010, 3012, 3018).
- Requires new transportation construction projects go through an environmental review process before they are started (Sec. 3024).
- Requires background checks and new licensing requirements for drivers of hazardous materials (Sec. 7105).
- Increases authority of law enforcement to search trucks containing hazardous materials (Sec. 7118).
- Calls for the establishment of performance standards for cars concerning rollover, side impact crash, back-over and ejection performance (Sec. 10301).