House Transportation chair reveals markup date for highway bill

House Transportation Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.) is targeting April 29 as the markup date for the surface transportation reauthorization bill and is negotiating a topline number between $500 and $550 billion, he told POLITICO Wednesday.

While a final topline number has yet to be agreed on, Graves said he has a ballpark figure.

“I’m gonna say it’s gonna be somewhere in the neighborhood of $550 billion or $500 billion — somewhere in there. That will be our number. We’re still actually — believe it or not — negotiating that,” Graves said.

That $550 billion total number being discussed for what is also known as the highway bill would be a combination of authorizations and contract authority for a five-year span.

If that number holds, the bill would be well below the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, which totaled $1.2 trillion, with $550 billion of that going to new federal spending for roads, bridges, transit, broadband, resilience and water infrastructure. Graves has said he wants the upcoming bill to be more traditional than the previous one with more focus on roads and bridges.

He added that he is in active talks with ranking member Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) and that he thinks Larsen “wants a little bit more” in funding. Peter True, a spokesperson for Larsen, confirmed Larsen wants a higher number than $550 billion.

Graves said there will be a registration fee for electric vehicles in the surface bill, a long-sought goal of his. Last year, he succeeded in inserting a $250 registration fee for EVs and $100 for hybrids in the House version of the GOP-led budget reconciliation bill, but those provisions never made it into law. He said the EV fee will be different this time around.

“We lowered it a little bit,” Graves said of the EV fee, though he did not provide an exact figure.

As for a registration fee on hybrid cars, he was less clear: “We're not sure yet, but yes, probably.”