GOP Rep. Shuster, transportation panel chairman, to retire

Shuster said he wants to focus his time and energy on working with President Donald Trump on legislation to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure. (Photo by United States Congress – http://www.house.gov/shuster/content/about_bill/press_kit.htm, Public Domain)

WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania Rep. Bill Shuster, the powerful Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced Tuesday that he won’t run for re-election.

Shuster said he wants to focus his time and energy on working with President Donald Trump on legislation to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

Although he was barred by GOP rules from seeking another term as transportation committee chairman, Shuster had publicly hinted that he would be staying in Congress and had noted that he is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee.

His rural Pennsylvania district is reliably Republican, but Shuster only barely beat back a GOP primary challenge in 2016 from tea party candidate Art Halvorson, who is mulling another run. Shuster’s father, Bud, had held the seat — and also chaired the transportation panel — prior to retiring in 2001.

As transportation committee chairman, Shuster is positioned to play a major role in the drafting of legislation to implement Trump’s infrastructure plan. He met last month with Trump at the White House. The administration expects to release a detailed set of infrastructure principles in the new few weeks.

Shuster said in Tuesday’s statement that he’ll spend his final year in office “focusing 100 per cent on working with President Trump and my Republican and Democratic colleagues in both chambers to pass a much needed infrastructure bill to rebuild America.”

His top legislative priority has been removing air traffic control operations from the government and placing them under the authority of a private, non-profit corporation. He has succeeded in winning transportation committee approval for the plan, but that’s as far as the proposal has gone.

Shuster helped persuade Trump to back the plan, which is also a top lobbying priority of the airline industry. But the bill faces fierce opposition from other segments of the aviation industry, including private pilots and business aircraft operators, and is almost universally opposed by Democrats. Short the votes necessary for passage, GOP leaders have been unwilling to bring the measure to the House floor for a vote.

“As we look to the legislative agenda this year and work with President Trump to upgrade our nation’s infrastructure and improve the lives of the American people, I know that Bill will continue to be an important leader,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

In 2015, Shuster acknowledged a “private and personal relationship” with Shelley Rubino, a vice-president with the trade association Airlines for America who lobbies the transportation committee. Shuster has repeatedly introduced bills and backed proposals sought by the airline industry.

Besides air traffic control privatization, he also introduced legislation that would have rolled back an Obama administration regulation requiring airlines to display the full cost of an airfare inclusive of taxes and fees rather than a posting a base rate and adding in taxes and fees later. The bill went nowhere in the Senate.