Max Baucus: “this is a very simple technical correction amendment. Very simply, it corrects a mistake that the Department of the…”

“this is a very simple technical correction amendment. Very simply, it corrects a mistake that the Department of the Treasury made. The administration tells us, incredibly, they need legislative authority to correct the mistake. This amendment simply does that legislatively, it corrects that mistake. Nobody disputes that a mistake was made--nobody. The administration admits it, and the Senators who have spoken on this issue also admit it was a mistake. What was the mistake? The mistake is very simple. Essentially, in 1994, the Treasury failed to credit the Highway Trust Fund with about $1.5 billion, an administrative error, a bureaucratic error. The Treasury then corrected that error in 1995, credited the Highway Trust Fund with the 1994 mistake, that is, the $1.5 billion and also continued to collect revenues in 1995, as they should. The problem is the extra bump, the additional revenue in 1995, that is not only the revenue to be collected properly in 1995 but also the additional $1.5 billion credit because the mistake was made in 1994, that additional bump skewed the formulas, because the formulas are based upon the revenue that was received in 1995; that is, the formula's distribution for future years is based upon the 1995 receipts. The Department of Transportation has written us a letter saying that they cannot correct this mistake administratively and cannot, by their own administrative procedures, correct this error.”