Senate Fails to Advance Either Party's Infrastructure Bill

WASHINGTON — The Senate failed to move forward on Thursday with either of the separate infrastructure jobs bills proposed by Democrats and Republicans.

The lawmakers voted 51 to 49, but failed to get the 60 votes needed to limit debate and avoid a filibuster, for the Rebuild America Jobs Act, S. 1769, sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

The bill, which essentially contained the transportation and infrastructure portion of President Obama’s jobs bill, would exempt tax-exempt bonds from the individual and corporate alternative minimum tax until Jan. 1, 2013, authorize the immediate investment of $50 billion in highways, transit, rail and aviation, and authorize the creation of an American Infrastructure Financing Authority. That infrastructure bank would be capitalized with $10 billion to leverage private and public investments in a wide variety of projects.

That bill would be paid for with a 0.7% tax on individuals with more than $1 million of modified, adjusted gross income.

Not surprisingly, administration officials strongly supported the bill and called for its passage. The Office of Management and Budget said, in a Statement of Administration Policy, that it “would put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job and modernize America’s crumbling infrastructure.”

OMB said the infrastructure bank would result in the investment of “a broad range of infrastructure projects of national and regional significance, without earmarks or political influence.”

But Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, blasted the infrastructure bank proposal just before the vote, and questioned how it could be independent it if it is government-owned and controlled by political employees, with a statutory mandate to take “political considerations” into account in making decisions about financing.

Hatch called the bank “a brand new public-private mongrel” that would subject taxpayers to losses just like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

However, Hatch’s alternative to the Klobuchar bill fared no better, as the lawmakers voted 53 to 47 against it.

Hatch’s bill — the Long-Term Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2011, or S. 1786 — would extend Highway Trust Fund authority and funding for highways and other modes of surface transportation for two years. It also would provide regulatory relief from Environmental Protection Agency rules, give Congress greater oversight of other agency rules, and require congressional approval for major rules with significant economic impact.

But before the vote on that bill, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, urged her colleagues to oppose it.

Boxer said the Hatch bill is not a jobs bill because it would be paid for by causing the loss of some 200 jobs for firefighters, police, and others. She also said that she is preparing to introduce bipartisan legislation to extend surface transportation funding for two years and urged colleagues to wait for that bill.

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