DALLAS — The House is set to adjourn for a five-week recess on Wednesday and its leaders hope before then to pass a 90-day extension of transportation funding that would replace a five-month measure the House passed July 15 as well as a six-year bill now being debated in the Senate.
The 90-day extension was proposed late Monday by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The move came shortly after Senators rejected a two-month extension proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. as an amendment to the six-year transportation bill.
McConnell and other Senate leaders said Tuesday morning they intend to move ahead with their multiyear bill, but House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the House will vote on the short-term extension and then break for the traditional August recess on Wednesday afternoon.
The Senate is not likely to vote on the six-year DRIVE Act until Wednesday, which could leave senators with the choice of accepting the House's short-term measure or seeing construction projects grind to a halt if the Highway Trust Fund runs out of authority on Friday.
Boehner said the Ryan-Shuster proposal, H.R. 3236, gives the House more time to consider a multiyear bill that that would be fully funded. The Senate proposal includes $47 billion of revenue offsets to support HTF for only three years of funding.
"I want a long-term highway bill that is fully paid for," Boehner told reporters following the weekly Republican caucus. "We've got work to do, and we need to buy some time in order to get that work done."
Quick passage of the 90-day extension before the break would require approval by two-thirds of the 435-member House.
Shuster said the latest extension would give the transportation committee time to review the 1,030-page Senate bill and work out any disputes between the two chambers.
"It will give us enough time for our committee to do our work, get something on the board, and go to conference," Shuster said after Tuesday morning meeting.
In a statement, Shuster said his goal is passage of a multiyear surface transportation bill as soon as possible.
"The Senate's work on their transportation bill is a positive step, but the House also needs to make its voice heard and put forth its own priorities for such a significant piece of legislation," he said. "I believe this three-month extension represents the compromise that allows the House more time, and a confirmation of our commitment to produce a fiscally responsible long-term proposal."
McConnell insisted that debate on the multiyear bill will continue despite the latest House proposal, which he did not mention, in a Senate speech on Tuesday.
"I'm proud to see the Senate continue along this difficult but promising road," McConnell said. "The important thing is the Senate is now on the verge of passing a multiyear bill."
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Senate should move up its schedule so it could send the multiyear bill to the House before it adjourns.
"I do not know what the House was doing back in the spring when we had our first Highway Trust Fund deadline under the 114th Congress, or what they were doing this summer when we were given two more months to find a solution," Inhofe said. "The solution is here. It's bipartisan, and it's the DRIVE Act."
However, moving up a Senate vote would take unanimous consent, which Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said is almost impossible.
The House should delay its recess for a few days or a week to pass the Senate bill, Boxer said.
"Take it, amend it, and send it back to us with your changes," she said. "We'll get it done."
The 90-day extension does not include a provision reviving the Export-Import Bank, whose charter expired June 30. The export finance agency is popular in the Senate but faces strong opposition from House leaders.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., criticized the Senate for wanting to send it a massive, multiyear bill with just hours to consider several years of highway and transit funding.
"How do you bring up a more than 1,000-page bill and send it to the House on the day of departure?" he said. "We're not taking up the Senate bill."
