Todd Zwillich

(Washington, DC)  The Senate blocked a politically-charged $60 billion infrastructure bill Thursday, continuing the partisan stand-off over transportation and jobs.

Meanwhile, House GOP leaders unveiled a major counter-proposal. They’re offering fully funded highway projects in the upcoming transportation authorization with royalties from expanded oil drilling.

The widely-expected result Tuesday came after Senate Democrats failed to break a GOP-led filibuster, blocking the bill from reaching the Senate floor. It also added fuel to President Obama’s election-year claim that Republicans are too bent on partisan politics to cooperate with the White House on job creation.

The bill proposed $50 billion in new spending on transportation infrastructure projects, including highways, transit, Amtrak, high-speed rail, and other categories on Democrats’ wish list. It also included $10 billion in start-up money for a federal infrastructure bank. That proposal has bipartisan support in the Senate but lacks GOP backing in the House.

The bill was paid for with a 0.7% surtax on income over $1 million.

Democrats pushed the bill as a way to pressure Republicans after the defeat of the $447 billion American Jobs Act. Some polls put support for infrastructure spending above 70%.

But Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Speaker of the House, accused Democrats of using infrastructure spending to box Republicans in politically. “The Senate this week is voting on another bill that is designed to fail,” he said.

A few hours later Boehner’s office announced it would introduce a new highway funding proposal “in the coming weeks." The bill, expected to be part of a proposed 6-year transportation reauthorization, would make up for expected shortfalls in the Highway Trust Fund with royalties from increased oil drilling.

The move could set up a difficult choice for Democrats: whether to accept expanded fossil fuel drilling, which many oppose, in order to reap the employment benefits of a robustly funded highway bill.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, appeared to reject the idea several weeks ago. “If they're talking about controversial new offshore oil drilling, which is what I think they're doing, that just sets up a huge fight. And that's the last thing you want,” she said.

Also Tuesday, Democrats blocked a Republican-backed alternative bill that funded transportation projects with cuts in other government spending.

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The Democratic-controlled Senate backed $108 billion in Fiscal 2012 federal transportation spending 69-30, flatlining budgets as Washington operates in a climate of spending cuts.

The bill passed after a long-delayed flourish of votes Tuesday.

It funds most transportation, transit and highway programs at or near levels for the Fiscal year that ended Sept 30. But when factored for inflation, it amounts to cuts to many programs. That’s largely because of new spending caps in place after Republicans and Democrats agreed to cuts during the federal debt limit fight last summer.

It also sets up a confrontation with the House Republicans, who have yet to approve a companion bill but are contemplating funding transportation at substantially lower levels. A House bill in the works now cuts $16 billion from transportation programs.

One big loser: High speed rail. The Senate bill has a mere $100 million for President Obama’s high speed rail initiative. While $10 billion has already gone to the program through stimulus and other spending, Congress is getting set to essentially zero it out for 2012. House Republicans have shown no appetite to fund high-speed rail further.

The Senate’s bill contains $55.3 billion in budget authority for the Department of Transportation. The rest is roughly $64 billion expected to be siphoned to federal highway programs through the Highway Trust Fund.

It leaves out a separate proposal from the White House that would create a $10 billion infrastructure bank to help capitalize infrastructure projects. That plan is tied up in election-year wrangling between Republicans and Democrats but may get a Senate vote in the coming weeks. Republicans have declared it dead in the House, however.

Here are a few of the funding levels contained in the bill:

$800 million in vehicle an driver safety programs

$550 million for “TIGER” infrastructure projects

$90 million for the "Sustainable Communities Initiative" at HUD

$41 billion in federal highway projects outside of the Highway Trust Fund

$25 million in transit energy efficiency grants

$8 million for new safety inspectors at the FAA

Meanwhile, the Senate turned away an amendment that would have limited how states can use “transportation enhancement” funds that normally go to aesthetic projects, sidewalks, bikelanes and other goodies. It killed another that would have pared back subsidies for some rural airports.

And, heartening planning groups, the Senate continued funding for the Obama administration's "sustainable communities" initiative, which is meant to encourage development that prioritizes transit and denser housing construction.

"We applaud the Senate for including continued funding for these programs in its proposed bill," said Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America."This means more efficient federal policies and a better use of taxpayer dollars. "

But that cheer may be short-lived: Even though the bill passed the Senate with solid bipartisan support, the fun is far from over. Thanks to partisan clashes over spending, the government is currently operating under a stopgap measure that expires November 18. If there’s no agreement on spending by then, Democrats and Republicans will either have to agree on another extension, or reach a grand bargain on spending for Fiscal 2012.

Transportation money could wriggle out from under the spending mess if the House passes its bill AND the House and Senate agree to a compromise by November 18. If not, it’s more negotiation not just over transpo dollars, but tied in with the rest of the government’s funding as well.

Bill summary is here.

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Sherman Minton Bridge, Closed for Repairs

Democrats are still working on their election-year portrait of Republicans as the enemies of job creation, and transportation spending is the next color on their palate.

Just hours after the failure of a bill spending $35 billion preserving jobs for teachers and first responders, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that Democrats will soon proffer $60 billion in infrastructure projects as way to create jobs. It's paid for with a 0.7% surtax on income over $1 million.

It's Democrats' second try pairing popular parts of President Obama's defeated jobs plan with tax increases on millionaires. In this case, Dems are going for $50 billion for myriad transportation projects and $10 billion in seed money for a federal infrastructure bank. The bank would fund transportation projects and also water, sewer and other infrastructure needs.

"We’re going to give Senate Republicans another chance to do the right thing," Reid told reporters on a conference call Friday.

Right or wrong, the bill stands little chance of becoming law. Republicans have shown unanimous opposition to using a millionaire's surtax to pay for stimulus spending. And while the idea of an infrastructure bank has bipartisan support in the Senate, House Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) has declared it "dead on arrival."

Still, the bill gives congressional Democrats and President Obama more ammunition against Republicans as they try to cast them protecting the rich at the expense of jobs. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood criticized fellow Republicans for "giving great speeches" about job creation but refusing to back the president on legislation. He said he'd "travel the country" calling GOP lawmakers to task and urging them to support the bill.

"A bill that builds roads and bridges and transit systems around the country is the best way to put friends and neighbors back to work,” LaHood said.

The GOP isn't having it. "Two years after spending tens of billions of dollars on ‘shovel ready’ projects in his first stimulus bill, President Obama famously admitted that those projects weren’t as shovel-ready as he thought they were. It would be the height of irresponsibility to make the same mistake twice," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Though still in draft form, the bill calls for spending on a variety of transpo goodies, including $27 billion for highway restoration, repair, and construction projects; $3 billion for transit projects, $2 billion for Amtrak; $2 billion for airport development; and $1 billion for aviation navigation including NextGen. It also has money for buses, surface transportation grants, and metropolitan projects.

Reid said he'll put the bill on the Senate floor the week of November 1, when lawmakers return from a week-long recess. If this vote goes how the last two have gone, expect Republicans to oppose it, come up with their own alternative, and for the election-year politics to fly.

Ray LaHood speaking earlier this year. Photo: Bossi via flickr

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood won't serve in the post beyond the end of President Obama's current term, the Los Angeles Times is reporting.

LaHood told the paper he will serve only one term in Obama's cabinet and that he won't follow through on speculation that he might run for governor of Illinois. "I'm not running for public office anymore," he's quoted as saying.

The comments came in an interview following a Washington speech in which LaHood, a former Republican congressman, urged GOP lawmakers to compromise with Democrats and pass new infrastructure programs as part of the president's jobs plan.

It's common for cabinet secretaries to serve for only one term. Notable exceptions included Donna Shalala, who served as Health and Human Services Secretary for all 8 years of Bill Clinton's presidency, and Madeline Albright, who served all eight years as Secretary of State under Clinton.

In his remarks at the National Press Club, which came before his interview  the L.A. Times,  LaHood expressed disgust with the partisan gridlock in Washington. "A lot has changed in this town since I arrived more than 35 years ago," he said, "but nothing changed more than the evolution of a culture in which elected officials are rewarded for intransigence." He continued: "For too many, compromise has become a dirty word -- for many, compromise isn't even in their dictionary."

LaHood lamented House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica's comments at a Wednesday  House committee hearing.

"Given what Chairman Mica said about the infrastructure bank yesterday, probably that's not going very far."  [Update:  at a Washington Post forum on Friday, LaHood said: "The President is not going to give up on the infrastructure bank.  Other countries have done it, a lot of states have done it, they've leveraged a lot of private money doing that." ]

He said on Thursday: "I believe that we are going to get an infrastructure program, and I believe it will happen before the end of the calendar year, because I think there's an enormous amount of pressure on Congress. When they go back home, and they go to their churches, and they go to their barbecues, and they go to their political events, the one thing they're hearing is: 'what are you going to do about jobs, and what are you going to do about the economy?' We know how to fix that. They know how to fix it. Reaching that kind of consensus, I think, is possible."

With reporting from Kate Hinds.

President Obama's jobs plan may have died in the Senate last night, but that that doesn't mean debate over a national infrastructure bank died along with it.

That's because Senate Democrats are likely to bring the infrastructure bank back as one of several stand-alone jobs bills expected on the floor in the coming weeks. It's all part of the president's promise to ratchet up political pressure on Republicans by making them vote on popular parts of his jobs bill piece by piece.

Senate aides say a federally-run infrastructure bank with$10 billion in loan-making authority is on their list, along with possible bills funding unemployment insurance, teachers and firefighters jobs, a payroll tax cut holiday and veterans hiring incentives.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) who directs Senate Democrats' political messaging, confirmed the spate of politically-charged jobs bills when he spoke to reporters just after the Senate defeated Obama's jobs bill last evening.

"This will be an ongoing fight until our Republican friends see they have to do something about jobs. And they will see it," he said.

House Republicans are not seeing it yet, at least on the infrastructure spending issue. A transportation subcommittee hearing on the topic quickly turned into a bashing session on the idea of an infrastructure bank, even though it enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate.

Republicans repeated their charge that the bank would create a new level of federal bureaucracy where loans and grants are already too slow to filter to states planning projects. Their primary concern: thirty-three states already have their own infrastructure banks funded under the federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.

“Many people would be skeptical that bureaucrats in Washington would have any idea about which projects would be most worthy of a federal loan," said Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.), the subcommittee's chair.

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who chairs the full House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, declared the federal infrastructure bank "dead on arrival in the House of Representatives."

But if Republican opposition is vehement, Democratic support, at least in the House, seems tepid. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), the subcommittee's senior Democrat, pointed out loans from an infrastructure banks are just that: loans. They have to be paid back. And he said transportation projects without a dedicated revenue stream, like a toll road, are unlikely to generate the money. Instead, DeFazio and other liberal Democrats back the idea of increased direct government spending on transportation projects as a way to beef up infrastructure and create jobs.

“An infrastructure bank could be useful to help this country deal with a massive infrastructure deficit. But it has its limits,” DeFazio said.

That view was backed up by Ron Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The inevitable source of revenues through an infrastructure bank seem likely to be taxes,” he said.

Still, despite the chilly reception in the House,  Senate Democrats seem likely to go ahead with their strategy of pressuring the GOP with repeated votes on jobs projects including an infrastructure bank. The proposal is likely to be paid for with a millionaire's surtax similar to the one that funded the broader jobs bill.

"We are going to keep at it, and keep at it, and keep at it...and they will see," Schumer said.

Sherman Minton Bridge

Sen. Rand Paul wants Congress to ignore the beauties and fix the beasts.

The Kentucky Republican and Tea Party favorite has a new bill out. It takes money set aside for highway beautification, cosmetics and other "extras" and instead targets it toward infrastructure in crisis. The point is to spend more on emergency infrastructure needs without having to wait for roads to crumble or bridges to collapse.

Case in point: The Sherman Minton Bridge spanning the Ohio River and linking Louisville, KY, with New Albany, Indiana. State officials closed the nearly 50-year-old bridge last month due to safety concerns. Several cracks were discovered and repair cost estimates stand at about $20 million.

President Barack Obama invoked the bridge at his September 22 speech on the importance of the American Jobs Act to infrastructure repair.  A day later,  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood toured the Sherman Minton Bridge with a passel of other federal officials.

“With an ever-expanding national debt and an increasing number of infrastructure projects nearing crisis level, the best solution to address both is to spend money we already have and put it to better use. By offsetting the cost of these emergency projects with funds previously used for turtle tunnels and squirrel sanctuaries, we are making infrastructure emergencies a priority without compromising our financial stability any further,” Paul said in a statement.

Paul's bill envisions a new National Emergency Transportation Fund, under the control of the Secretary of Transportation. The agency would maintain a prioritized list for emergency repairs on projects like the Sherman Minton Bridge.

Paul's bill is unlikely to get stand-alone treatment in the Senate. Instead it is likely to become part of a complex mix as House and Senate negotiators try and reach agreement on the final version of transportation authorization legislation.

FAA Building in Washington D.C. (Photo (CC) by Flickr user cecliaflyer)

Several thousand government employees sidelined in this summer's Federal Aviation Administration shutdown are about to get back pay, according to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

A spat between House Republicans and Senate Democrats in Congress sent the FAA into a shutdown for 12 days between late July and early August. That meant furloughs for about 4,000 FAA workers since their agency had no legal authority to pay many of its bills.

But LaHood announced Monday in a blog post that those workers would see back pay for those lost wages in their paychecks on October 18. "For these folks, like so many families across America, a single missed paycheck can be a huge burden in these tough economic times. So I'm thrilled to finally be able to make this situation right for them," LaHood wrote in the post.

In fact LaHood didn't quite make the situation right single-handedly. Congress authorized the back pay as part of the latest FAA extension that passed Congress in September. The money, about $20 million, is set to come from the Airway Trust Fund, according the DOT.

The announcement will be a relief for FAA workers, but it does basically nothing to solve outstanding issues over a long-term FAA reauthorization bill, still under debate in Congress. Leaders of both parties say they're making progress on big-ticket issues including labor rules, passenger airline slots, and overall funding levels for the FAA.

(Washington, DC) Senators have reached an agreement allowing Congress to temporarily authorize federal transportation law and also avoid another shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Senators on Thursday evening agreed to move ahead with a combined bill temporarily re-authorizing both the FAA and federal surface transportation legislation known as SAFETEA-LU. The bills were being held up by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) who wanted to cut a section of the bill mandating spending on non-vehicular "enhancement" transportation projects like pedestrian paths and bike lanes.

Coburn temporarily used procedural maneuvers to prevent the bill from reaching the Senate floor. But Coburn agreed to lift his objections under a deal reached Thursday evening. In exchange, a permanent highway bill currently in House-Senate negotiations will contain language allowing states to opt-out of giving states more flexibility on "enhancement" spending mandates.

About 60 percent of funds under that provision, known as Transportation Enhancements, go to biking and pedestrian projects. Other uses range widely.

Both Coburn and Senate Democratic aides confirmed the deal.

FAA's current authorization is due to expire Friday at midnight. The FAA shut down for several days early last month because of House-Senate agreements on labor rules and rural air subsidies. This week's brief  standoff raised the prospect of a second FAA shutdown, which leaders of both parties were trying to avoid.

The bill extends FAA's authorization until January 31st and the highway bill until the end of March.

US Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)

A deal between Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress to temporarily extend authorizations for both the Federal Aviation Administration and surface transportation programs has hit a snag. And that snag is Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

Coburn is blocking the Senate from moving on to a combined FAA-highway bill approved Tuesday by the House. He's objecting to long-standing language in the surface transportation funding bill, known as SAFETEA-LU, that directs 10 percent of some of the bill's funds to non-road projects. About 60 percent of funds under that provision, known as Transportation Enhancements, go to biking and pedestrian projects. Other uses range widely.

The Oklahoma budget hawk took to the Senate floor Wednesday to list some of the projects that may be funded under under what the highway bill designates as "enhancements." They include a simulator at a Corvette museum in Kentucky and "White Albino Squirrel Sanctuary." Coburn complained that such projects are a waste of transportation dollars at a time when the country faces both deep deficits and crumbling roads and bridges.

"There ought to be a time in which we say enough's enough," Coburn said.

Any individual senator can object to consent requests that let the Senate operate more quickly. Coburn's objection could force  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to go through procedural motions that would require days to pass the FAA-transportation extension deal.

That's not uncommon in the slow-moving Senate. But the problem here is that the FAA's current authorization expires on Friday. Failure to approve a temporary FAA reauthorization by then would mean another shutdown, one both parties intended to avoid.

Coburn's objection clearly irritated Reid, who on Thursday suggested the Oklahoma Republican was trying to act as "a dictator" in the Senate.

Coburn offered two ways around a potential FAA shutdown Friday: 1) separate the FAA and highway bills, pass the FAA bill and let the House do the same; or 2) amend the combined package before the Senate to take out the "enhancements."

Negotiations continue.

Stay tuned.

Washington, DC -- Even the most rabid prize fighters go to their corners to rest.

Just six weeks after an ugly and embarrassing showdown that shuttered the Federal Aviation Administration for several days, the House on Tuesday easily extended the agency's authorization for four months. They even combined it with a six-month extension of controversial federal surface transportation legislation. The melded package passed the House on a voice vote.

Now the package heads to the Senate, and while easy passage is never guaranteed, it appears headed for approval by week's end there too.

So how did we get from a toxic FAA shutdown in August to an easy, drama-free extension in September? A combination of political pressure and progress on broader issues are at play.

Republicans returned from the August recess last week acknowledging what they said was public disgust with Washington dysfunction. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) stressed that government shutdowns and brinkmanship do no good for a flagging economy. And with President Barack Obama now trying to hold lawmakers' to account for some election-year job-creation, the premium is now on cooperation--or at least the appearance of it.

In August, the FAA shutdown because Senate Democrats wouldn't accept a House Republican bill that cut about $16 million from a rural airport subsidy program known as the Essential Air Service. House Transportation Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) was seen by many to be intentionally antagonizing Democrats like Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

But the public, largely blind to the struggles of career lawmakers, saw it as a failure of an already failing Congress. Both sides seemed loathe to repeat the exercise so soon.

A senior House GOP aide maintained that the shutdown was entirely the fault of the Senate Democratic leadership. "It didn't make anybody in Congress look good," he said.

That conclusion by House leaders prevailed this week after Mica crafted another FAA extension bill, this one with budget cuts to the agency almost guaranteed to enrage Democrats. The bill was quickly supplanted by one crafted by House leaders that combines an essentially "clean" FAA extension with a highway bill extension at current funding levels.

"I had crafted another FAA authorization," Mica said in an interview Tuesday, just after House passage of the temporary extensions package. "It's basically been a good day. There have been some tough days to lead to a good day," he said.

But negotiations are also moving ahead on some of the tough political issues still dividing Republicans and Democrats in a separate, long-term FAA reauthorization. On Tuesday, Reid linked the easy FAA and highway bill temporary reauthorizations to progress on bigger issues in the FAA permanent bill.

"We're working very very hard to come up with a way of getting the FAA bill done on a permanent basis and getting the highway bill done on a longer term," Reid said.

Neither Mica nor Reid would elaborate on the issues they're discussing in longer term bills. But many of the issues are well-known. Republicans have insisted on repealing an Obama Administration rule, enforced through the National Mediation Board, making it easier for workers at non-union airlines and rail companies to organize. Republicans, both in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, are also going after a the White House for a National Labor Relations Board ruling that sanctioned Boeing for moving operations from Washington State to  South Carolina, where union protections are relatively lax.

"We're working very well with the leadership in the House, convincing them that we're doing our best, I'm convinced they're doing their best to try to get these done on a longer term basis," Reid said.

It is, of course, too early to say whether this-week's detente will lead to agreements between the parties on the FAA and sighway bills. The labor issues in the FAA bill play to the political cores of both parties. And House Republicans and Senate Democrats remain billions of dollars apart on their versions of transportation funding over the next several years.

One senior Senate Democratic aide said the temporary deal merely buys more time for a broader deal that may or may not materialize. "There's been a lot of happy talk, but there hasn't yet been any actual show of compromise," the aide said.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (Getty Images)

(Washington, DC) President Obama may be ratcheting up the pressure on Congress to pass his jobs plan, but the House's Republican transportation gate-keeper doesn't seem terribly interested in playing along.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica (R-Fla.) tossed cold water on Obama's call for a national infrastructure bank Thursday night, just minutes after the president told Congress to put partisanship aside and pass his plan quickly.

"We've already had experience with some of these federal grant programs that requires Washington bureaucrats, Washington red tape, Washington approvals and then bowing and scraping to Washington. I'm strongly opposed to any type of a new federal infrastructure bank," Mica said in an interview following the speech.

The White House's vision for the bank includes $10 billion in "seed money" and an independent board to attract private capital to infrastructure projects. The point, of course, is the get the projects going and get workers digging without the taint of big government spending projects now out of favor. It's all part of an overall $50 billion infrastructure proposal in the estimated $447 billion American Jobs Act proposed by Obama last night.

Instead, Mica said he'd be willing to toss some money at the states and de-couple it from federal infrastructure rules. "We have 33 states that have existing state infrastructure banks. People won't need to come to Washington if we empower those existing state infrastructure banks."

After a bruising and bitter partisan summer fight over debt and deficits House Republican leaders have spent this week stressing their desire to cooperate with the White House on areas where they can agree. That could include payroll tax cuts and hiring incentives for businesses. Republicans and Democrats, mostly in the Senate, support the infrastructure bank model, so there is reason to believe that part of Thursday's plan could attract bipartisan support. But Mica's statements appear to cloud the future of an infrastructure bank.

For Mica, new infrastructure programs in a stand-alone jobs bill could undermine tense House-Senate negotiations over reauthorization of the Highway bill. Mica is locked in a battle with Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) over bills that are separated by years in duration and tens of billions of dollars in funding.

Boxer offered her support for Obama's jobs bill, but that's not to say all Democrats are gung-ho. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said the proposal wasn't bold enough

"We need a massive investment program in the future of this country to make us competitive in the world economy, and this bill falls short the same way the original stimulus did. As far as I can calculate, about 12% of this bill will be invested in infrastructure. The last time (with) stimulus it was 7%. Fifty percent or more for tax cuts. It's a formula for continued stagnation," DeFazio said after Obama's speech.

Meanwhile, the White House spent Thursday night and Friday blasting out emails heralding support for the plan from Democrats and some corporate leaders.

All the pessimism on the Hill doesn't mean the infrastructure part of Obama's proposal is dead. Obama asked the 12-member deficit reduction panel known as the "supercommittee" to increase its debt-cutting targets to fully pay for the larger plan. In addition, Congress has to wait until next week  to get the American Jobs Act in legislative form. It'll wait another week for Obama to put forward a promised deficit-reduction package that Democrats say could offer 10-year cuts north of $3 trillion, including changes to Social Security and Medicare.

In that context, $50 billion for infrastructure may well find a place to hide.

And he's serious. Sort of.

The Eastern European mayor who made himself an Internet video sensation by crushing a parked car with a tank says he's doubling down on the stunt from earlier this month. More armor is soon to hit the streets of Vilnius, Lithuania's capital city, as part of his comical but earnest campaign against illegal parking.

Arturas Zuokas, car-crushing mayor of Vilnius (photo by Todd Zwillich)

The bit has earned over 3 million hits on YouTube so far. "I'm impressed even myself!" Arturas Zuokas exclaims from across the table in a spacious 19th-floor office suite overlooking the ancient city. Now he's trying to capitalize on all the attention by letting the tanks roll once again. Zuokas says he's about to rent at least one more armed personnel carrier and station it near places notorious for illegal parking.

The point? Intimidation. And also a laugh. Zuokas' video got the residents of this town of 550,000 talking. It's more worldwide attention than Vilnius has gotten since -- well, possibly ever. Now Zuokas wants to increase pressure on illegal parking. Scofflaws earn a warning sticker on their first offense. Second offense brings a fine, and the fines are about to go way up.

The third offense? The tank, Zuokas says, will be moved around the city to remind drivers--particularly the wealthy--that it may be too terrible to imagine for this status-obsessed town.

"We hope it will not be needed to crush your car," Zuokas says with a laugh.

He's not going to crush your car. Zuokas is having fun playing the populist, but as far as Benz- and Beemer- bashing is concerned, that's about as far as it goes. Internet viewers worldwide hailed Zuokas for sticking it to the rich by flattening the rich guy's Mercedes in the video. In fact, Zuokas says, he bought the 12-year-old sedan himself and staged the stunt for about $4,000 USD. The army provided the armor via a local military museum. And the hapless "rich dude" seen in the video emerging, stunned, from a Benetton store on the city's swankiest shopping drag is a friend who, Zuokas says, was a decent visual archetype of luxury car drivers in Vilnius.

Staged as the video was, the message was clear. "I hate it when rich guys with very expensive cars, they park where they want," Zuokas says. "My idea was to show to them there exists limits. It doesn't mean if you have a big, expensive, car you have more space in the town."

"I want this guy"

Zuokas' media savvy stems, at least in part, from his former career as a television reporter and war correspondent. To many, the Benz-crushing was a symbol of working-class revenge. Bicycle enthusiasts saw it as a blow against car culture (the Mercedes sits parked in a bike lane when its destroyed.) Bike-lane supporters in cities like Washington, DC, and New York were particularly gleeful at the stunt.

Others saw it a symbol of effective government. "I want this guy to be mayor of my town!" one commenter wrote on YouTube. "Let's do it in London!" wrote another.

Vilnius bike lane (photo by Todd Zwillich)

The former television reporter is, of course, now a politician. Zuokas is happy to let people see the video as they please. He admits to driving "good cars" himself and says he counts the city's wealthy luxury car drivers as his friends and political supporters. "They know me and I know them," he says, when pressed on whether he's going to crush any cars really owned by real rich guys.

But he's quick to turn the discussion of his media fame to transportation policy in this increasingly-congested city.

Vilnius is preparing to roll out city-wide bike sharing next year -- similar, Zuokas says, to fledgling programs in Washington and New York. It's the second try for bike sharing in Vilnius. The city deployed 1,000 orange-colored shared bikes a decade ago but had to abandon the program. "The citizens, they destroyed them or they stole them in two months," Zuokas says.

Vilnius also has a pilot program of electric scooters parked at charging stations in a few spots around the city center. There are 20 "e-bikes" deployed now, with 25 more soon to follow. The bikes look like souped-up, battery-powered Razor scooters once popular with kids. Over four days in Vilnius several people were seen gazing at the bikes at their stations but none was seen riding one.

E-bikes in Vilnius (photo by Todd Zwillich)

Zuokas also says he wants to bring back a program that outfitted several city buses and electric "trolley buses" as homages to famous composers. A portrait of a composer would be on the outside, while his or her music plays over high-quality speakers on the inside. Zuokas says this time he's willing to be flexible about the lineup, since some bus drivers complained before a similar program was dropped by the previous administration in 2008.

"Some of them all day, they don't want to listen to Wagner," he says.

Parking and Populism

Zuokas says he's serious about transportation policy -- and indeed, kept talking about it long after an aide told him he was late for other appointments. He says the tank stunt brought a new focus to parking and other transportation issues that don't have much sex appeal on their own.

Not all the attention has been positive. Last week the Associated Press retracted a photo of the event released by Zuokas'' office because it had been digitally altered, one of the riders on top of the tank removed. Zuokas says the photo was an innocent mistake by a hired photographer who was unaware he was committing an ethical breach, but the city issued an apology.

The AP flap notwithstanding, it's perhaps no surprise that Zuokas is continuing his Internet-fueled tank gambit by deploying more armor on the city to nudge (if not crush) drivers into compliance with parking laws. The Lithuanian army is no longer interested in playing along, so the next heavy vehicles will be rented from private collectors, the mayor says.

It's a recipe for possible parking improvements and almost certainly for more media attention, both of which seem absolutely fine with Zuokas.

In the interview, New York's Michael Bloomberg and several lesser-known transportation technocrats rounded out a list of policy makers who've publicly cheered the video on. Earlier, Zuokas and an aide began the list in near unison: "Ashton Kutcher!"

UPDATED WITH OBAMA REMARKS Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he has a deal with the Republican House to end the 2-week-old standoff that shut down the Federal Aviation Administration.

Reid issued a statement Thursday afternoon. It reads: “I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work. This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain. But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that.”

President Obama applauded the deal in a statement:  "I'm pleased that leaders in Congress are working together to break the impasse involving the FAA so that tens of thousands of construction workers and others can go back to work. We can't afford to let politics in Washington hamper our recovery, so this is an important step forward."

In essence, the deal amounts to a temporary disarmament from both Republicans and Democrats. According to Senate aides, the Senate is prepared to accept the House's bill, the one that pared back the Essential Air Service subsidy program for rural airports. BUT the Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will use his authority to waive that provision.

Translation: The Senate swallows the House bill it hated, but the Obama Administration uses its authority to keep actual policy where it was.

A spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) confirmed the deal.

The Senate could push the deal through as early as Friday.

LaHood issued this statement moments after Reid announced the deal: "This is a tremendous victory for American workers everywhere. From construction workers to our FAA employees, they will have the security of knowing they are going to go back to work and get a paycheck -- and that's what we've been fighting for. We have the best aviation system in the world and we intend to keep it that way."

Notice the part of Reid's statement making it clear that difficult issues still remain between Republicans and Democrats on the FAA. The Essential Air Service issue will still have to be solved, as will a bruising fight over Obama Administration rules that made it easier for workers airline and rail employees to unionize. We'll be back at this in September.

(photo by Tom May/Flickr)

UPDATED WITH RAY LAHOOD: A senior Senate Democratic aide now tells Transportation Nation that the deal is off. Democrats will NOT accept the House GOP's version of a bill temporarily extending the Federal Aviation Administration. The decision means the two-week-old shutdown caused by the standoff is likely to continue.

The statement comes as a surprise when you consider what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said earlier today. Reid said he was prepared to accept the House GOP's bill on the Senate floor today. The move would have sent the bill to the president, and if signed, reopened the FAA.

"Sometimes you have to be reasonable," Reid said.

His position was backed by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who has been waging a p.r. blitz to get Congress to get the FAA fully back in business. LaHood told reporters on an afternoon conference call that he'd talked with Reid "three or four times" today and that Reid had said he "really wanted" the Senate to vote for the House bill. "I have no doubt from talking with him he really wants this to happen," LaHood said of Reid.

But the bill wasn't reasonable to other Democrats, who've railed against the House GOP's tactics in the shutdown fight. The only difference between the House and Senate bills is about $13 million worth of subsidies for some small airports, one of which happens to be in Reid's home state. The Senate has demanded a "clean" extension of the FAA's funding.

Meanwhile, the House members have left town, leaving the Senate to decide: accept the GOP's terms or allow the FAA shutdown and thousands of temporary layoffs to continue.

While decrying the loss of those jobs and the suspension of improvements to the U.S. aviation system, Secretary LaHood insisted flying safety would not be compromised--even if a bill wasn't passed. "Flying is safe," he said. "Air traffic controllers are guiding planes. Our inspectors are on duty, doing their jobs."

FAA inspectors who check planes for air-worthiness are still on the job because they're paid from the operational side of the agency's budget and not the side furnished by airport fees and taxes, which the FAA stopped collecting when it was partially shut down. However, 40 airport safety inspectors are being required to work without pay because their jobs have been deemed critical to "life and property."

In the background there's a larger fight over union organizing rules at airlines and rail companies on a separate, longer-term FAA bill.

"Not over till it's over," said a spokesman for Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), moments after Reid said he'd acquiesce to the House's demands.

Rockefeller's office later released a statement blaming the FAA shutdown on Republicans' intransigence on the union issue. Rockefeller says: “Today, Republicans once again objected to a simple, fair request—a ‘clean’ extension of funding that would maintain operations into the fall, allow the FAA to function, and restart bipartisan negotiations, which Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and I have made clear we are ready to do.  From day 1, House GOP leaders admitted openly—almost proudly—that they were doing this to gain ‘leverage’ toward a larger goal—undermining worker rights."

A statement from Reid's office blames the GOP's move for "laying off thousands of air travel workers just because they are not getting their way."

Senate Dems note that the House could conceivably reconvene and pass a "clean" FAA extension if Senate Republicans would only relent and let one through.

The bottom line is this: Two hours after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was ready to break the impasse and reopen the FAA, we're right back where we started: shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday Democrats are prepared to give in to House Republicans in the two-week old standoff over the Federal Aviation Administration. But other Democrats appear less willing to give in and could put a kink in Reid's plan.

UPDATE:  Democrats have walked that back, and now say there won't be a deal, setting the stage to keep the partial shutdown going until September.  Read the latest HERE.

Reid told reporters he's prepared to accept the House's version of a bill temporarily reauthorizing the FAA. If no other senator objects that means the stare-down will end and the FAA can soon reopen.

"Sometimes you have to step back and find out what's best for the country," Reid said Tuesday.

Minutes later, a spokesman for Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-Va.), emailed to say: "Not over til it's over." (Note: so true -- TN learned minutes later Democrats wouldn't agree to the House's FAA bill.)

Reid would need the agreement of all senators to go ahead with his plan to accept the House GOP bill, send it to the president, and re-open the FAA. That statement from the Rockefeller aide suggests that agreement may not be easy to get.

Indeed, a Senate Democratic aide emailed moments ago to say the situation is "at an impasse."

Here's a transcript of Reid's remarks. You can listen to the audio here.

Todd Zwillich: If Republicans don't accept a clean temporary extension to the FAA after you're on the floor by the end of the day will you accept the House version and re-open the FAA?

Senator Reid: Yes.  I have said we have 80,000 jobs at least on the line.  In Nevada, as an example, we have a new airport tower there that they started the construction about two weeks ago, all those people have been laid off.  That's a huge project, nearly a $100 million project.

Barbara Boxer just told me they have problem with the control tower in Palm Springs and as I understood it  they've shut down the construction on that and they only have one there so that's difficult.

The Essential Air Services is a program I believe in but I also believe that $3500 per passenger is a little extreme, that's what Ely Neva is and I do my best to protect the state but sometimes you have to be reasonable,  I think, as we learned with this big deal we've just done. Sometimes you have to step back and do what's best by the country and not be bound by some of your own personal issues. I'm willing to give that up I hope the other Senators would do the same.

(Washington, DC) House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republicans have backed Democrats into a corner: Surrender Tuesday or the FAA stays shut for the rest of the summer.

House members left town Monday evening after passing their default-dodging debt limit deal. And they did it with an impasse between the two sides of the Capitol over a temporary Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill unresolved.

The Senate is still in town, set to vote on the debt deal Tuesday. That means the only options left on the FAA are either for the standoff to last until Congress returns in September, or for the Senate to cave. And the Senate says it isn't budging.

Earlier Monday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood traveled to New York's LaGuardia airport to unleash a blistering critique of the congressional stalemate, and to implore Congress not to go on vacation before the funding dispute was resolved.   LaHood says 4,000 FAA workers have been furloughed and 70,000 construction workers idled.  The FAA also said some airport inspectors are being required to go to work -- but can't be paid until the funding issue is settled.

To recap, the GOP-controlled House two weeks ago passed a temporary authorization extension for the FAA. But the bill included a tweak taking a bite out of federal subsidies for just a small handful of regional airports. Senate Democrats refused to swallow the bill, instead insisting on a "clean" extension. The FAA, and nearly 4,000 furloughed workers, have been sitting in the crossfire ever since.

In the background of all this is a partisan dispute over federal union rules. A longer-term FAA authorization bill is currently stalled in House-Senate talks because GOP lawmakers want to repeal an Obama Administration rule making it easier for workers at airlines and rail companies to organize. Senate Democrats, led by Rockefeller, have accused Republicans of using the short-term FAA bill as leverage over the union issue.

On Monday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-Va.), chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, tried to clear a pair of FAA bills through the Senate. One was the "clean" extension Democrats have been bucking for, the other was a new package of about $71 million dollars in regional airport subsidy cuts, far larger than the cuts Republicans are pushing.

But GOP senators objected to both measures, extending the deadlock past the time when House members skipped town.

Asked Monday evening  if there was a change of averting an FAA shutdown for the remainder of the summer, Boehner said, "That depends on the Senate."

A Rockefeller spokesman said Monday that it was unclear whether jammed Senate Democrats would accede to the House FAA bill and reopen the agency.

The 5-day-old shutdown at the Federal Aviation Administration continued Wednesday, as senators clashed over who’s to blame for the standoff.

FAA went into a partial shutdown at midnight on Friday after the law governing the agency expired. Both the House and Senate have a temporary extension of the law teed up, but a spat over a politically-charged bit of union politics continues to divide Republicans and Democrats while keeping most of FAA dark.

Democrat Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) and Republican Orrin Hatch (Utah), two of the most senior senators, traded barbs on the Senate floor Wednesday over the shutdown. The legislative dustup amounted to little, as 4,000 employees remain furloughed and billions of dollars in aviation construction projects are stalled.

In the immediate sense, the shutdown was caused when the House and Senate passed slightly different versions of a bill temporarily extending FAA’s authorization. The difference was a tiny House provision restricting small-airport subsidies to airports where carriers get more than a $1,000 federal payment per ticket. That’s a sum-total of three airports nationwide in the Essential Air Service program.

Senators wanted a “clean” temporary extension. But while the gambit from House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica annoyed senators, it has little to do with the actual shutdown. That’s a full-blown fight over union organizing rules in the aviation and rail industries.

A long-term, full FAA authorization bill is stalled in House-Senate negotiations over a partisan disagreement about federal rules governing how workers can vote to unionize. Last year the National Mediation Board altered rules so that only a majority of workers voting would be needed to unionize a shop. Previously unions had to muster a majority of all workers.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Rockefeller blasted House Republicans for using the temporary authorization bill to gain leverage on the union rules fight in the bigger bill. He repeated his charge that the move was designed to protect non-union Delta Airlines, which is hoping to prevent workers from organizing.

“This is not policy it’s pettiness,” Rockefeller said.

Hatch was on hand to counter, saying that Democrats were defending “a big partisan favor done at the behest of Big Labor.”

Rockefeller and Hatch blocked each other’s attempts to pass the temporary FAA authorization bill through the Senate. The standoff continues.

Catch Rep. John Mica on The Takeaway Thursday morning. He'll be on live to discuss the FAA shutdown and the ongoing congressional fight over the federal debt limit.

UPDATED Senate lawmakers officially unveiled their crack at a new transportation authorization bill Wednesday, setting up a clash with the House that could see transportation legislation continue to languish.

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) are trying to build support for their 2-year highway bill worth about $54.5  billion per year. That's just about what the surface transportation programs cost right now. And it's that fact that has the Senate on a collision course with cost-cutting House Republicans.

Senators are giving their bill the catchy moniker, "MAP-21", standing for "Moving Ahead with Progress for the 21st Century".  The bill, which exists only in outline-form for now, is looking for 35% more money per year for Highway Trust Fund than the competing House measure. What's more, senators want a quick 2-year extension that could be altered again in the next Congress. House Republicans, lead by Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) want a six-year extension at $35 billion per year for highway programs.

The Senate bill has a $12 billion budget gap over gas-tax revenues that would need to be filled before the $109 bill 2-year bill could be passed.

Current transportation authorization law expires September 30th, which will either force a compromise or, more likely, result in a temporary extension of current law.

At hearings Wednesday, Boxer urged lawmakers to "act now", because cuts envisioned in the House bill would cost 630,000 jobs. "If we don't step up to the plate, we will see all these hundreds of thousands of jobs lost and we will see our infrastructure continue to crumble," she said.

That's not to say the Senate and Mica are completely at odds. Both bills inject $1 billion into the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) program, a favorite of city and regional officials because it fronts loans and loan guarantees for infrastructure projects. TIFIA is worth only about $120 million now, and the potential increase has hard-lobbying mayors ecstatic.

"Any reduction in funding to our nation’s transportation programs will deal a devastating blow to local projects, local jobs and the national recovery," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday. "Take it from an Angeleno, congestion is a job-killer," he said.

The Senate bill's other main feature is a consolidation regime that compresses more than 85 transportation and infrastructure programs down to 30. The idea is to pare down redundancy and give states more control over the specifics, according to aides.

"These changes will ensure that Americans get the most for their gas tax dollars Inhofe said Wednesday. He said the bill has lacks livability standards Democrats wanted, though it does not go far enough to streamline federally-funded projects.

"What we do have is a bill that can pass the Senate," Inhofe said.

What they also have is a bill that's going to pick a fight with spending hawks in the House and elsewhere. In fact, not even all of the transportation funding in MAP-21 is paid for by the trust fund, meaning tax-writers in the Finance Committee will have to go about the task of finding the difference in an austerity environment.

There are still more transportation proposals to come in the Senate. Split jurisdiction give responsibility for passenger rail and transit to other committees, so stay tuned for those proposals.

(Washington, DC) The House extended Federal Aviation Administration authorization on Wednesday. For the 21^st time.

House lawmakers backed a  two month extension of current FAA law, 243 to 177, as a long-term extension bill waits in negotiations with the Senate. It was the 21^st short-term FAA extension since Congress last succeeded on a longer-term bill in 2007.

“We hope there won’t be another one,” said Justin Harclerode, a spokesman for House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fl.)

Temporary extensions like this one normally pass Congress with little notice. But today there’s a twist. Mica added a bit of language to Wednesday’s bill paring back the controversial Essential Air Service program, which for years has subsidized smaller regional airports serving areas far from big hubs. Mica’s bill excludes from the program any airport getting more than $1,000 per passenger in federal aid. That would cut off three airports, according to congressional aides. This comes at a time when private airlines are looking to scale back US subsidized service and after a long term trend of fewer short haul flights.

The move drew annoyed responses from Democrats, who accuse Mica of going back on previous agreements on EAS.

Now it will be up to the Senate to accept the tweaked House bill or refuse to act and force the House to send it a “clean” extension. The latter is far more likely.

The Department of Transportation has urged Congress to pass a "clean" version, saying that without a full year extension furloughs will begin on July 23 and $600 million in airport construction projects compromised.

John Mica, center, chairing a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting at Grand Central Station (Kate Hinds)

(Washington, DC -- Todd Zwillich) House Republicans formally floated an outline of their 6-year transportation bill Thursday, promising to try for large cuts in highway funding and to send more influence over projects to the states.

GOP lawmakers presented the $230 billion bill as a way to fund critical transportation projects in lean economic times. Democrats promptly attacked it as inadequate and said it would not reach President Obama for a signature.

The most glaring top-line from Republicans’ bill is a major curb in federal highways spending. The bill caps spending from the Highway Trust Fund to what it takes in in taxes. That’s projected at right around $35 billion per year over six-year life of the bill. That would comprise a major cut in highway spending, which has been borrowing money from the rest of the government for years to fund new projects and upkeep. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus, alone has spent about $63 billion on highway projects since 2009.

“We believe we can do a lot more with less,” said Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) at the committee’s roll-out event on Capitol Hill.

The “more” part, Mica said, comes from streamlining how highway projects go from blueprint to blacktop. The bill pares back environmental review requirements and other clearances for new projects. It also overhauls or eliminates up to 70 programs that now funnel money into highway projects and instead focuses on sending money to states in the form of loans and infrastructure bank installments.

A GOP handout promoting the bill states that the average highway project would get completed in six years under the bill, compared with 15 years now.

All of this together, Mica said, would mean more, not less, money reaching projects.

“I think we can more than double the $35 billion we have in the Trust Fund,” he said.

Still the funding level is way below a $55 billion-per-year, two-year proposal put forward by Senate Democrats Wednesday. That points up a deep divide that many lawmakers think will be impossible to bridge in order to get a final bill. The transportation sector is now operating under Congress’s 8^th temporary extension.

Republicans are also proposing to up the direct federal loans under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) to $1 billion and to give more control over the funds to state and local authorities. That’s good news for mayors like Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, who chimed in by phone to offer his support.

Republicans are also gunning for changes in high-speed rail funding, including the very definition of “high-speed”. Trains funded under the bill would have to go at least 125 mph to qualify as high-speed, not the 110 mph used now.

View House Republicans 17-page bill outline here (http://republicans.transportation.house.gov/Media/file/112th/Highways/Reauthorization_document.pdf)

Actual text of the Republicans’ bill could be out in time for a scheduled hearing next Tuesday. But Democrats took little time to trash the GOP proposal.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), called Mica’s bill a “road to ruin.". "It takes our nation in the wrong direction, backwards instead of forwards. Instead of putting America on a pathway to prosperity, this bill provides the necessary funds for transportation to half the country and tells the other half to wait around for the next time," said Rahall, the ranking Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Given the $20 billion-per-year gap between House Republicans’ 6-year bill and Senate Democrats’ 2-year bill, prospects of the GOP proposal surviving in its current form seem dim.

John Mica, center, chairing a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting at Grand Central Station (Kate Hinds)

“I don’t think it goes anywhere,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a member of the committee, said in an interview.  “I don’t think six years of stability is worth setting bar so low that it’ll take us years to crawl back. I think what’s most likely is we’ll get probably a 2-year extension.