WASHINGTON — Congress approved a 90-day extension of federal highway funding Thursday, capping a week filled with wild legislative twists and turns that led House Republican leaders to pull shorter-term bills from the floor three days in a row when it was clear they wouldn’t be approved.
But the House finally voted 266 to 158 to approve the extension — the ninth since the law expired on Sept. 30, 2009. The Senate approved the extension by voice vote, and it must now be signed by President Obama before the existing law expires Saturday at midnight.
The House vote came after a dramatic week in which the GOP leadership sought a vote on a shorter 60-day extension on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Each time, however, Republicans had to abandon their attempts.
Lobbyists said they have never seen such a dramatic, partisan feud over transportation legislation.
“This is like a bad soap opera,” Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., said during the debate. “Shame on the leadership for bringing us here today.”
Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., agreed that another short-term extension is not ideal but said it’s “the only way” to stop more than 100,000 projects from being shut down this weekend when the flow of federal money would shut off.
With the House scheduled to take off Friday, time was up to find a longer-term measure. “This is our last chance to do it,” he said.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., accused Republicans of playing “infrastructure chicken,” but John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the Transportation Committee, shot back that Democrats failed to pass anything except six extensions when they had majorities in both chambers of Congress in 2009 and 2010.
“Let’s get the facts straight, and reality straight,” Mica told colleagues.
Both parties accused the other of “kicking the can down the road” by failing to pass a longer-term law.
Janet Kavinoky, executive director for transportation and infrastructure at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was relieved to see the extension but stressed that the House has to get a multi-year bill passed so it can go to conference with the Senate and finally produce a new long-term law.
“The House has got to get a bill passed,” she said.
Mica agreed to sponsor the temporary extension to surface transportation funding, including federal authorization to collect the gasoline tax, after his controversial five-year, $260 billion reauthorization failed to gain traction last month.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats, led by Barbara Boxer of California, held press conferences every day this week to urge House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to agree to a vote on the two-year, $109 billion highway bill she co-sponsored with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., that was approved by the Senate earlier this month.
Democrats in both chambers and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood hailed that bill as a model of how the House should proceed.
The Senate bill contains provisions that would temporarily increase the limit for bank-qualified bonds to $30 million from $10 million, exempt private-activity bonds from the alternative minimum tax, eliminate the PAB volume cap for water and sewer bonds, and authorize state infrastructure banks to issue tax-credit bonds for transportation projects.
Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., introduced a House companion to the Senate bill, but it never went before the full House for a vote.
