House Says it Won’t Take up Senate Highway Bill

But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said prior to the Senate vote that he was “disappointed by these continued partisan attempts to strip away insurance coverage for nearly 20 million Americans”, adding that “it is time for Republicans to move on and not take another politically motivated vote that is going nowhere”.

The Senate’s version of the highway bill, which is on monitor to cross later within the week, units coverage and authorizes transportation packages for six years, although with funding for less than three of these years.

House leaders are even more hostile to the idea of a highway bill that would also revive the Export-Import Bank.

“We’re not taking up the Senate bill”, McCarthy, R-Calif., told reporters. “You can call our press office”, Cruz said before a spokeswoman stepped in front of him as he walked through the Capitol.

Authority for federal highway aid payments to states will expire at midnight Friday without congressional action. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who were also joined by Sen.

“When he won the majority in January, he did say that his job was going to be to show America that Republicans can be good stewards of the Senate, good stewards of Congress to show they can keep the government running, the government open, bills passing”.

“By casting votes in favor of cronyism and special interests, the Senate made clear what group matters most to them… and the answer is not the American people”, Cruz said.

“Squabbling and sanctimony may be tolerated in other venues and perhaps on the campaign trail, but they have no place among colleagues in the United States Senate“, said Hatch, the Senate’s president pro tempore. Maybe Cruz’s motives for doing so are mixed up with his presidential ambitions and strategy, which finds all the candidates trying to figure out a way to break the single-minded media hypnosis over Trump.

“Such misuses of the Senate flooring should not be tolerated”. “Speaking the truth about actions is entirely consistent with civility”.

The independent federal agency offers loans, capital guarantees and insurance to foreign buyers of U.S. products and services. In past years the bank was renewed with little or no controversy and sometimes without so much as a roll-call vote.

Adding to the pressure, the billionaire GOP Koch Brothers took on the cause through their allied organizations Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners, pressuring GOP presidential candidates who are jockeying for the Kochs’ coveted financial backing to toe the line.

Renewal of the bank’s charter faces strong resistance from conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, however, and that could make it tougher for the House and Senate to agree on a final highway bill. And the ultimate outcomes on the highway bill and the Export-Import Bill were uncertain, although it looked likely late Monday that Congress would consider a short-term highway extension.

For the second, leaders of each chambers are insisting that exclusively their version of the laws will fly.

While the transportation bill is taken into account a “should move” legislative auto, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy pushed Congress nearer to an August 1 cut-off of federal freeway development cash on Monday. McConnell blocked Lee’s effort because he said it was irrelevant to the highway bill.

House Republican leaders say their approach would buy them time to try to come up with a tax overhaul deal coveted by the White House and some leaders in both parties, which they could use to pay for a long-term highway bill.