House Republicans are also pursuing an alternative plan that would be linked to an overhaul of the system for taxing American multinational companies and using a one-time tax on profits parked overseas to fund a six-year highway bill.
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The Highway Trust Fund is supplied mostly from gasoline and diesel taxes.
Though there are differences between the two bills, both chambers are focused on shifting accountability back to the states while maintaining “important measures of academic progress”, Alexander said. “In Mississippi, for example, almost a quarter of our roads are in ‘poor condition.’ The bill that passed the Senate today is not ideal, but it would help clear the backlog of many stalled bridge and highway projects necessary for economic growth and commerce”. He says House members have questions about how the bill will be funded, and some object to a provision in the Senate bill that revives the Export-Import Bank. Instead, Congress passed a three-month highway bill, providing more time to negotiate.
“We all want the House to have the space it needs to develop its own bill, because we all want to work out the best possible legislation…in conference”, McConnell said Thursday. Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate, accused the party’s Senate leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, of lying over a deal to allow a vote on the matter.
The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed a short-term surface transportation bill that would extend federal funding of transit and highway programs at current levels through October 29.
“That’s the one that really ought to concern Reno residents”, she says, “It needs some major work and we’re already looking several years down the road”.
Co-sponsored by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), David Vitter (R-LA), and Tom Carper (D-LA), the bill would provide more than $40 billion in revenues to cover shortfalls in the Highway Trust Fund during the first three years of the legislation’s six-year authorization.
The Senate’s DRIVE Act, in addition to removing CSA scores, would require FMCSA to produce a comprehensive study on the program and how it can fix the disparate data and calculation issues that have plagued it from the onset.
On the 6-year transportation bill, auto safety advocates – including some Democratic senators – argued that far stiffer penalties for automakers, as well as increased transparency and additional regulation to ensure safe vehicles should have been included. The gas tax brings in about $35 billion a year for highway programs, but the government is spending about $50 billion.
The bill, H.R. 22, is opposed by the banking industry because it would finance highways partly by reducing dividends to banks from the Federal Reserve. The Senate is scheduled to be in session for another week before leaving Washington.
As many as 270 members of the 435-seat House would vote to reauthorize the bank, Hoyer said, adding, “I will yield to anyone on this floor who will say: Mr. Hoyer, you are wrong”.
“The House has left Washington for its August break”.
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But he assured them that it will be “smooth sailing” when Congress returns in September from its five-week vacation.
