Rep. Graves: Transportation Reauthorization Is Built on Compromise
5/27/2025
Updating attendees at APTA’s 2025 Legislative Conference, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, was excited and confident about his committee’s overall progress toward surface transportation reauthorization.
“We intend to have it finished,” he said. “We will have the bill marked up this fall and off the House floor by the end of the year.”
Graves noted the committee met its $10 billion budget reduction target and will bring “the first new money into the Highway Trust Fund in over 30 years,” through electric-vehicle fees. The $250 fee “is actually about what the average person spends in fuel tax in a year.”
He also highlighted some of the investments planned in the bill: $12.5 billion “on air traffic control modernization,” particularly for communications facilities and equipment; and $21 billion for the U.S. Coast Guard, “to do more port drug interdiction and immigration enforcement.”
Much work remains to get the reauthorization to a vote. While Graves and ranking Democrat Rick Larsen (D-WA) will focus the committee on compromises, bipartisanship, and defending their bill “in lockstep,” before the Senate, Graves charged transportation advocates with educating Members of Congress on the importance of reauthorization by September 2026.
“When you go into offices and talk about your priorities and the things that you need, Members of Congress listen,” he said. “We want to push just how important it is to do this and to do it on time.”