A stalemate in Congress will choke off the flow of federal transportation funding to states starting Monday and cause the furlough of thousands of employees on Tuesday, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee said this afternoon.

The federal surface transportation authorization law, which expired Sept. 30 and has been extended three times since then, will again expire on Sunday, and Congress has been unable to pass an extension.

U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., today used procedural prerogatives to singlehandedly block another extension from moving through the Senate.

"Astonishing," said Rep. James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., who chairs the transportation committee.

At a briefing for reporters this afternoon, Mr. Oberstar said starting Monday, daily reimbursements averaging $153.6 million will cease to flow from the Federal Highway Administration to states. Some $31.4 million per day in payments by the Federal Transit Administration will also be frozen.

A variety of highway safety programs will shut down, including the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, he said.

On Tuesday, all FHWA and FMCSA employees will be furloughed, along with portions of the staff of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the congressman said. He estimated that 4,000 workers would be sidelined.

Of significance to Pennsylvania, the FHWA continues to consider the state's application to toll Interstate 80. Any work on that issue presumably would halt.

If the shutdown persists, states could halt their contract letting, and construction jobs could be affected, Mr. Oberstar said. "This is just a terrible turn of events."

PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said a short freeze -- a week or so -- won't seriously affect the state, but "an extended delay will seriously disrupt our schedule."

"What failure to enact the latest extension by the deadline means is that FHWA is out of business and cannot process our reimbursements for costs incurred improving highways and bridges. We have the state dollars to cover our payments to contractors for now, but we are talking about roughly $1.5 billion a year in federal dollars that are critical for our program and we can't replace that with state dollars over an extended period," he said.

"The other impact is if FHWA is shut down, we can't get the approvals we need to advertise projects for bid. We are aiming for another $1.8 billion in highway and bridge contracts this calendar year. And we are approaching construction season, so we need our program to move forward on schedule."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce criticized congress for failing to extend the transportation law. "The shutdown of the federal highway program means that thousands of jobs are at risk," said Janet Kavinoky, the chamber's transportation and infrastructure director.

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