Oberstar planned to go ahead with markups for his bill the week of June 22. But, with the kind of extension the administration now says it wants and the difficulty in deciding how to pay for future road programs, it may well be 2012 before Congress can gather itself to pass the kind of long-term highway bill he envisions.

‘Sort of a Rough Start’

It’s not that Oberstar wasn’t warned about how difficult it would be. At the very outset of this Congress, his party’s leaders sharply limited his role in assembling the economic stimulus bill (PL 111-5), which Oberstar and others thought was tailor-made for financing transportation projects that could quickly put people to work. He had written his own proposal and held hearings, gathering testimony from economists and from state and local leaders who vowed that investments in transportation infrastructure were the greatest short-term stimulus. But as the measure grew, Oberstar was edged out, and transportation became just a sliver in the overall package.

Oberstar raised his voice, offered amendments and tried to convince his colleagues that more money for infrastructure was the key to stimulating the economy, but in the end he didn’t get his way.

“It’s sort of a rough start. He got dealt a short hand,” says Mica. “There’s irony that he’s had to wait so long, and now the administration isn’t supporting some of his positions.”

Oberstar, in fact, seems to be the only one who believes a long-term reauthorization bill can become law this year. Although the legislation is his to manage, paying for it would require the cooperation of Charles B. Rangel of New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Max Baucus of Montana, chairman of Senate Finance. Even before the White House said it wanted to put off debate on the big issues, including highway financing, neither Rangel nor Baucus seemed eager to wade in.

Rangel has said it would take something exceptional to justify to the public spending nearly $500 billion over six years for transportation. Asked recently about his transportation priorities, he said, “I’ve got my hands full right now.” And Baucus has made it clear that health care legislation is his priority.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has authority over highways, has been largely preoccupied by the climate change debate. Chairman Barbara Boxer of California sounded almost relieved after the administration’s announcement. The extension, she said, would “give us the necessary time to pass a more comprehensive multi-year transportation authorization bill with stable and reliable funding sources.”

Finally, the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, which retains jurisdiction over mass transit policy, has been and will continue to be at the center of legislation emanating from the troubles in the financial services industry. (The attention of the panel’s chairman, Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, is further stretched because he’s also a central figure in the health care debate.)

At a House Appropriations hearing on transportation spending in early June, Iowa Republican Tom Latham said flatly that an authorization bill couldn’t happen this year and probably couldn’t in 2010. At that point, fellow Republican Steven C. LaTourette of Ohio commented that he’d just heard a loud thud down the hall. It was, he said, the sound of Jim Oberstar falling over.

Running With a Fast Crowd

Highway bills and the chairmen who get them passed can take on an almost mythic quality. Oberstar’s most recent predecessors, Republicans Bud Shuster (1973-2001) of Pennsylvania and Don Young of Alaska, both had the tough-mindedness, larger-than-life personas and horse-trading skills that have essentially become prerequisites for passing just about any expensive legislation.

Both GOP chairmen lavished earmarks on their colleagues to get their transportation packages passed; the 1998 law was so popular that Shuster in essence was able to write the Appropriations Committee out of transportation spending for a time.

The grandfatherly Oberstar, known for his stories and sincerity, seems ill-suited by temperament for such bare-knuckle negotiating. “His parents were of the type to instill that you work hard for what you believe in and other people are more important than you are,” said Jill Beatty, who worked on Oberstar’s staff for 33 years. “I can’t think of anything he would have ever done out of selfish motives.”

His power has been in his knowledge, his almost encyclopedic mental catalogue of facts, figures and dates that he can readily provide in casual conversation. He speaks six languages, so well, in fact, that during a heated debate at a committee hearing several years ago with a longtime friend, Norman Y. Mineta (1975-95), Bush’s initial Transportation secretary, Oberstar started making his argument in fluent French in an effort to lighten the mood. Mineta said he was taken aback, and just responded, “I’m going to tell my esteemed colleague his approach is as understandable as what he just said to me.”

Oberstar, says fellow Democrat Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, lets his expertise and passion do his political work. “He’s not a reflexive deal cutter.”

Yet his knowledge is formidable, and, Oberstar’s allies say, it may still be sufficient to pull off a highway bill despite the odds.

Though he did not head a subcommittee dealing with highway issues before becoming chairman of the full Transportation Committee, Oberstar inserted himself in negotiations over highway authorization bills throughout the 1990s.

“He was a leader even as a member of mid-level seniority,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “I have consistently been amazed by his intellectual grasp of what is needed, but I think he is also a crafty strategist. He’s gained that through his interaction with people like Bud Shuster.”

Such sprawling and expensive legislation as a highway bill is difficult for even the most skilled politician to drive into law. Shuster and Young were helped by having surpluses in the Highway Trust Fund. Even with that, it took Young two years — and a significant downscaling of his own aspirations — to complete his surface transportation bill, in 2005 (PL 109-59), a delay that prompted Congress to write a dozen short-term extensions of the previous law.

Oberstar was the panel’s top Democrat at that time, and Young credits Oberstar’s institutional knowledge for finding a compromise on the $286.5 billion measure. “I got it done,” Young says now. “I might not be the brightest candle in the world, but I do have persistence, and I had James’ brain behind me.”

An Ambitious Vision

Oberstar sounds almost like Newt Gingrich of Georgia (1979-99), when he frames his transportation policy. The former GOP Speaker was fond of packaging his theories as pithy lists — like “five principles for a successful life” or, most famously, the 10 promises of the Contract With America. Oberstar envisions his time for shaping highway and mass transit policy as the “fifth transformational era” in U.S. transportation policy.

In Oberstar’s view, the first was in 1894, when a bicycling lobby called the League of American Wheelmen persuaded Congress to spend $10,000 assessing the condition of the nation’s roads; the second was the establishment of the Bureau of Public Roads in 1916; the third, and arguably the most momentous, was the inauguration in 1956 of the Interstate Highway System and the federal Highway Trust Fund to pay for it; the most recent was when the purview of the twice-a-decade-or-so “highway bill” was expanded in 1991 to include public transit — “intermodal,” in the argot of transportation policy.

What Oberstar envisions now is a national intermodal transportation system with federal investments driven by goals, somewhat like the testing standards for education programs. Major metropolitan areas, for instance, would have to produce six-year plans for increasing mobility. The notions are based largely on recommendations of a study commission established by the 2005 transportation law.

Oberstar’s bill would establish a National Infrastructure Bank to pay for transportation projects of national significance — an idea Obama touted during the campaign.

Oberstar’s emphasis on standards and goals is partly to help repair the reputation of transportation programs, which in the public’s view have been laden with wasteful spending spurred on by a lack of accountability and the political culture of earmarking. Two of the most ridiculed examples are the signature projects pushed by the previous two chairmen: Young’s since-scuttled “Bridge to Nowhere,” which would have connected the town of Ketchikan to an island with about 50 residents and an airport; and Interstate 99, cut through western Pennsylvania over the past two decades to connect Shuster’s hometown of Altoona to the rest of the Interstate system.

Despite some calls to do away with earmarks in this authorization, Oberstar has said that “member high-priority projects,” as he calls them, are going to stay. According to the most recent compilation of lawmakers’ earmarks by the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, Oberstar was in the top 5 percent among all members of Congress for appropriations earmarks in fiscal 2008. But most of the spending was on projects he pushed along with other lawmakers.

“I think he has to present a convincing case that the new legislation is a departure from the past,” said Pete Ruane, president of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. “Due to a variety of circumstances, the credibility of the program has been called into question. It has been driven into people’s mind that it’s nothing but pork barrel spending.”

Oberstar recently announced a new accountability system for earmarks in his legislation: For a parochial project to have a chance at inclusion, the sponsoring House member must submit a letter of endorsement from the relevant state or local governments and also disclose the project request on his or her official Web site and allow for public comments. “These reforms allow us to have an opportunity to direct funds to the most urgent needs of our districts,” Oberstar said at a hearing where members presented their individual requests for projects. That approach is a stark departure from past practice, in which members faced almost no accountability for the projects they requested.

Oberstar has also planned to include a section — popular with the Obama administration — that would promote the idea of livable communities, with an Office of Livability in the Transportation Department. For the past half-century, the federal government has focused on supporting the Interstate system as an essential ingredient in long-haul trucking and other commerce and has spent less on secondary roads in cities and suburbs, which have been considered a state or county concern. That focus gets plenty of the blame for poorly planned suburban sprawl.

Such an emphasis would be similar to what Oberstar considers one of his biggest achievements: the Safe Routes to School program, created in the 2005 law, which contributes federal money to build bike and walking paths and to pay for adults to supervise or train crossing guards. Schools may now compete for a James. L. Oberstar Award for the best and safest routes.

For the congressman, securing that money gave him the same excitement as rewriting transportation law this year. Just think, he mused recently, “with that defining legislation we have an opportunity to change the habits of an entire generation of Americans. Now we have an opportunity to move transportation into what I would call the fifth transformative era. We’re going to do it right, we’re going to do it well, and we’re going to do it inclusively.”

Freeways Are Never Free

Obama, congressional leaders and governors no doubt agree with Oberstar that the nation’s road and rail networks are in desperate need of repair and expansion. But persuading them to pay for it is another matter.

Transportation experts say there is absolutely no way to reach the level of spending Oberstar envisions without increasing the federal excise tax on gasoline, which is collected for the benefit of maintaining and expanding the road and mass transit networks. And the administration has made it clear that Obama will not hear Oberstar’s plea for support of an increase in the gasoline tax. House leaders, meanwhile, have stayed conspicuously quiet.

When LaHood issued a brief written outline of the administration’s proposal, in fact, he carefully avoided discussion of how to pay for it. “I am proposing that we enact critical reforms to help us make better investment decisions with cost-benefit analysis, focus on more investments in metropolitan areas, and promote the concept of livability to more closely link home and work,” he said, quickly adding, “The administration opposes a gas tax increase during this challenging, recessionary period, which has hit consumers and businesses hard across our country.”

Raising taxes is never politically popular, but doing so in hard economic times just doesn’t seem politically possible.

In August 2007, just after Congress quickly agreed to provide $250 million to replace the Interstate 35W bridge that had collapsed during an evening rush hour in downtown Minneapolis, Oberstar tried to use the feeling of cooperation to pass a short-term increase in the gasoline tax — from 18.4 cents to 23.4 cents a gallon — to help pay for bridge inspections. “If you’re not prepared to invest an additional 5 cents in road reconstruction, bridge reconstruction,” Oberstar told a news conference, “then God help you.”

They weren’t, and his initiative died.

This time, Oberstar has faced the task of persuading both the Ways and Means and Finance committees to endorse a short-term gasoline tax increase to ensure that states have enough cash to continue their transportation projects.

The federal highway system has depended on gasoline taxes for more than 50 years, but fluctuating revenue caused by high fuel prices, along with the increasing use of alternative fuels, more energy-efficient vehicles and mass transit have made the revenue source less reliable. The current tax, which hasn’t been increased since 1993, is not bringing in enough revenue to maintain spending authorized in the 2005 surface transportation law.

Finding a Political Solution

“Congress appears so polarized, and I think it’s in the best interest of the nation to increase the gas tax, but the political implications he might not be able to overcome,” said Douglas J. Johnson, a former Democratic chairman of the State Senate’s tax committee in Minnesota. “I voted for a number of gas tax increases during my career in the Senate, and many of my constituents didn’t like my vote, but they liked the improved highways that resulted.”

Oberstar does have research on his side. Two bipartisan, independent commissions mandated by the transportation law enacted four years ago both concluded that an increase to the gasoline tax is essential to, at the very least, maintain the program at current levels. The 12-member National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, composed of congressional and White House appointees, recommended raising the tax on gasoline between 5 cents and 8 cents each year during the next five years while experimenting with other ways to generate revenue for road projects.

The commission estimated that such a tax increase would cost average Americans $12 to $20 each month for every car they drive, according to commission member Jack L. Schenendorf. LaHood has said there are other financing options available, but experts say a short-term increase to the existing money source is the only viable way forward.

“Getting the kind of robust funding in the current environment is going to be a tougher lift than we’ve had,” Ruane of the Road Builders Association said. Oberstar’s challenge, he said, is convincing all of his colleagues that it’s good public policy. Otherwise, they are faced with cutting the program or deficit spending.

Oberstar might well plow ahead no matter how opposed the administration is to a long-term highway bill. He has argued that once the president saw his plan, he would embrace its benefits and be eager to pay for it. In fact, in a show of bravado recently, Oberstar said he wouldn’t settle for anything less than the grand plan he’s drafted. If Congress can’t get behind it, then he’s willing to let the programs lapse this fall and force lawmakers to return to their states and explain why they have no transportation money.

Among the other options are leveraging private partnerships, tax credit bonds and the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank, which is Obama’s pet choice. The bank would rely on bonds to provide transportation money.

The financing gridlock may begin as a gasoline tax battle, but it does not end there. The White House has also been hesitant about Oberstar’s other main idea for paying for the system: taxing drivers based on the number of miles they travel. Oberstar squared off with the administration in February when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said a tax on vehicle-miles traveled would not have the president’s support. Oberstar retorted that he would be writing the authorization bill, not the White House.

Oberstar is sick of studies and pilot programs, and he says the authorization bill should begin to phase in the new user fee within a few years. But it’s not that simple. Not only is the technology not ready, but there’s a broad public perception that it would be a slippery slope to the government tracking each American’s whereabouts. For that reason, privacy groups reject the idea and are prepared to fight it. Even Blumenauer, a member of the Ways and Means Committee whose home state has been trying out a user fee based on miles driven, said there needs to be more test programs around the country to “increase public awareness and comfort” with the idea. But Oberstar brushed off that concern.

Oberstar won’t discuss the financing struggles ahead — in fact, his draft bill doesn’t even include a method for raising the money. This is, after all, his transportation vision. The obstacles are an afterthought.