Senate struggles with highway bill (Update)

By Miles Moore, Senior Washington Reporter

WASHINGTON (July 22, 2015) — The Senate failed to invoke cloture July 21 on a six-year, 1,000-plus-page highway reauthorization bill.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., needed 60 votes to proceed to a vote on the measure, but the July 21 vote was 41-56. Senate Democrats, in particular, complained they had received the text of the bill only one hour before the vote.

Sen. McConnell said he would try to schedule another cloture vote July 22.

Although the bill is a six-year funding reauthorization, it only authorizes enough money for six years of highway funding through $47 billion in spending offsets.

According to sources, the package contains a provision included in several other transportation bills requiring independent tire dealers and auto repairers to register every tire they sell and transmit the information electronically to tire manufacturers.

The measure is supported by the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA), which says it provides a necessary fix to chronically low tire registration rates.

However, the Tire Industry Association (TIA) disagrees with the RMA about the registration rates, and insists the bill would create an untenable burden for tire dealers.

On July 21, TIA joined with the Safety Institute and Families for Safer Recalls in calling for requirements for mechanical readability of tires to increase recovery in tire recalls. TIA and Sean Kane, founder and president of the board of directors of the Safety Institute and founder of Safety Research & Strategies Inc., have usually disagreed in the past about tire safety issues.

Current transportation funding runs out July 31. The House of Representatives has already passed an $8.1 billion funding extension that would run until Dec. 18, an action praised by few.

“With another short-term bandage in hand, Congress must now use the time in earnest and work every day of the next five months to pass a well-funded, multiyear surface transportation reauthorization,” said Robyn Boerstling, director of transportation and infrastructure policy for the National Association of Manufacturers, in a July 15 statement.

The proposed bill would provide a path for auto safety regulators to impose bigger fines on auto makers that violate the law and take limited steps to address loopholes in the nation's auto recall system, according to Automotive News, a sister publication of Tire Business, but it would stop short of some of the stricter measures sought by Democratic lawmakers.

Under the bill, as reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee last week, funding for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) defect investigation operations would grow — but only after the agency completes a series of reforms sought by the U.S. Transportation Department's inspector general. The maximum penalty that NHTSA can impose would double to $70 million, provided the reforms are completed.

The proposed budget increase is in line with the Obama administration's Grow America Act transportation funding proposal. It would nearly triple NHTSA's defect investigation budget to $31.3 million. The additional funding would more than double the office's headcount to 108 employees, including some 22 engineers, plus additional investigators, statisticians and other workers to bolster the department's ability to detect and analyze safety defects.

Automotive News reported that the highway bill also would prohibit rental cars with unrepaired recalls from being rented to consumers and would deposit fines collected by NHTSA to the Highway Trust Fund that pays for road projects rather than sending the penalties to the U.S. Treasury.

If adopted in their current form, the measures included in the highway bill would add up to relatively modest changes for U.S. auto safety after months of loud calls for major changes in the wake of the General Motors Co. ignition switch and Takata Corp. airbag defect cases. The proposal also puts the onus on NHTSA to demonstrate that it deserves additional funding and powers, reflecting a more suspicious view of the agency among lawmakers after the inspector general's scathing audit detailed long-standing deficiencies at the agency that it said undermined its watchdog role, Automotive News reported.

Auto safety advocates and some Senate Democrats have pushed for more aggressive reforms, many of which were included in a proposal to broadly overhaul U.S. auto safety laws introduced earlier this month by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., with backing from Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Ed Markey, D-Mass.

The trio sought to make it a crime for auto executives to knowingly conceal defects or corporate decisions that could injure or kill consumers, punishable by fines and up to five years in prison. Their proposal also would have eliminated the cap on fines that can be imposed by NHTSA, let the agency ground vehicles with dangerous defects and prohibited dealers from selling used cars with unrepaired recalls.

That proposal was defeated by a bipartisan vote in the Senate Commerce Committee last week, after its backers sought to attach it as an amendment to the broader highway bill.

But the fight may not be over, as Sens. Blumenthal and Markey vowed July 20 to continue pressing for the used-car restriction on the Senate floor.

To reach Miles Moore: [email protected]. This report includes a story by reporter Ryan Beene with Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.