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This week, the House is expected to take up a proposed three-month extension to SAFETEA-LU, which House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) introduced last week, according to a legislative alert from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). The current SAFETEA-LU extension expires on Saturday.

Mica’s measure would extend the Highway Trust Fund, including the Mass Transit Account, expenditure authority, taxes and highway and transit funding authorizations through June 30, APTA officials said. If passed, the extension would be the ninth since SAFETEA-LU first expired on Sept. 30, 2009.

Last week, House Democrats failed in an attempt force the House to consider the Senate’s two-year, $109 billion transportation bill, which the Senate passed in a bipartisan vote on March 7. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has called for passage of the Senate bill, but also has suggested that if a SAFETEA-LU extension must be passed, that it should be for 45 days to encourage swift action on a longer term bill, APTA officials said.

Also this week, the House is expected to take up a budget resolution passed by the House Budget Committee, which called for discretionary spending in 2013 to be another $19 billion below the $1 trillion level included in the Budget Control Act of 2011.

“The budget resolution includes projections of deep cuts to budget authority for transportation programs in fiscal-year 2013 and beyond,” APTA’s alert stated. “Additionally, the budget envisions specific cuts to current and planned high-speed and intercity rail projects, but policy of that nature would have to be legislated by the authorization and appropriations committees.”

In the Senate, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) filed a “deeming” resolution calling for Congress to adhere to the FY2013 spending levels it had already agreed to in the Budget Control Act as part of last year’s debt agreement.