They met Monday night with bank proponents, and according to a source in the meeting, the group believes a Senate-passed highway-funding extension with Ex-Im attached to it would allow them a vote in the House to extend the bank’s charter.
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The Senate still could vote this week on the long-term bill, but if the House recesses Wednesday without passing it too, the Senate would then have to pass one of the short-term bills to prevent the Highway Trust Fund from running out of money. The Senate would follow suit.
Miller said he was pleased with the considerable time legislators spent on the bill and the amount of input they took from advocates on all sides of the issue to develop something everyone was comfortable with. “We don’t know what the House will do until we pass a bill”, Grassley says.
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Tuesday that a temporary transportation funding extension proposed by the House could set up a fall conference between the chambers on the future of the nation’s road and transit spending. We’ve been trying to do this for four years.
Inhofe called on the Senate to shorten the debate time so that the Senate could finish it ahead of the departure of House lawmakers.
While the House has shown little appetite for the Senate legislation, Sen.
But neither chamber would accept the other’s approach, leaving the short-term extension as the only way out.
States including Republican-led Iowa and South Dakota have also increased gas taxes or borrowed to compensate for federal inaction. At the same time, if Congress doesn’t act before then the balance in the federal Highway Trust Fund is forecast to drop below a minimum cushion of $4 billion that’s necessary to keep aid flowing smoothly to states. Senators, however, have provided for only three years of funding for their six-year plan. Republicans agreed to it as a necessity while complaining about the VA’s failure to anticipate the problem.
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While the House is scheduled to leave town after approving the short-term highway bill with added language for veterans, the Senate is scheduled to be in session through next week. While I agree with fiscal conservatives who think that the federal government doesn’t need to be involved in most transportation issues in the first place, as long as it is involved, the deficit spending is doing more harm than good by making state and local transportation agencies increasingly reliant on the federal government rather than on user fees. Representative Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat, attacked the effort to kill the Ex-Im Bank, telling reporters it would put U.S. companies at a disadvantage with foreign competitors.
