Senate moves forward on 6-year highway, transit bill

However, that decision ultimately falls to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

That proposal was defeated by a bipartisan vote in the Senate Commerce Committee last week, after its backers sought to attach it as an amendment to the broader highway bill.

The legislation is expected to dominate Senate debate into next week but would represent the first multi-year U.S. surface transportation bill in a decade, if it succeeds.

The vote sets the Senate on a path toward likely passage by the middle of next week, setting up a possible confrontation with their Republican colleagues in the House. They, along with Senate Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, oppose a plan to help fund the highway bill by reducing the 6 percent dividend paid by the Fed to member banks. They have stated their goal is to save the trust fund to give Congress adequate time to pass a long-term transportation bill.

The Senate legislation also faces a hard sell in the House, where lawmakers produced an $8.1 billion plan to fund infrastructure projects, but only into December.

“There’s ways to deal with it. You can go to conference”.

Sen. Tom Carper voted no, and said “we’re like operating in the dark”. “I know basically what’s in it, but I haven’t seen it in writing”.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, criticized the Senate for finding only three years of funding.

“It’s a bad idea”, said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a leading House conservative.

Complicating the matter is the future of the Export-Import Bank – a government agency that issues loans to foreign entities to purchase American-made goods like Boeing airplanes and Caterpillar tractors.

Boxer called the agreement a “breakthrough” but neither she nor McConnell provided details of the bill or where its funding comes from, something that could be a sticking point. Ms. Boxer and many of her colleagues have pushed for a multiyear highway bill because transportation systems around the country say they have a hard time planning ambitious, long-term projects when funding is available for a year or less. The money is compiled from 16 different provisions that include unspent funds from a Treasury Department program aimed at helping homeowners, as well as cuts in Social Security benefits to “fugitive felons”.

“I’ll be darned if I’m going to let someone take money that’s for Social Security to use it [on highways] because they’re not willing to do the right thing to impose a user fee so we can fix our roads”, he said. Republican and Democratic negotiators in the Senate announced an agreement on a six-year highway and transit bill, subject to approval by rank-and-file lawmakers. Supporters think that between Democrats and pro-bank Republicans, there will be enough support to keep the renewal in the bill. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the measure.