http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/249290-house-gop-to-senate-were-not-taking-up-your-highway-billBy Scott Wong - 07/27/15 02:28 PM EDT
The House will not vote on a multi-year Senate highway bill that revives the now-expired Export-Import Bank, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday.
“We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy declared to a roomful of reporters in his office.
Instead, McCarthy urged the Senate to take up a short-term House-passed bill which extends federal highway funding for five months, without renewing the Ex-Im Bank charter. He called the House bill the “best option” for Congress before money for highways, bridges and mass transit runs out on Friday.
McCarthy’s declaration is a blow not only to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) had teamed up to craft the bipartisan, long-term highway bill.
It’s also a blow to backers of the Ex-Im Bank, who had hoped the 81-year-old institution would be revived by catching a ride on the back of the Senate transportation bill. The charter for the bank, which provides loan guarantees to help U.S. corporations sell goods overseas, expired on June 30.
The Senate transportation bill authorizes highway funding for six years, but only provides three years in funding.
McCarthy, who controls the House floor schedule, said the lower chamber plans to leave for the August recess on Thursday. And he said it’s not fair for the Senate to send the House a massive 1,000-plus-page bill just days before the funding deadline.
Upon hearing about McCarthy’s remarks, Boxer, shot back at the fellow Californian, saying the House should follow the Senate’s lead and stay in session a week longer rather than decamp for the summer recess.
“You know what, we’re staying an extra week in August. You can stay an extra week in August. That’s not such a terrible thing,” Boxer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
McCarthy “says don’t send us a bill because we’re going home. Well, that’s their choice.
“If the House chooses to go out on vacation or a work period of whatever they do, that's their business. But it's our job to fix the problems we're facing,” Boxer said.
Another way out of the funding mess is an even shorter-term highway bill, perhaps one that provides just two or three months of transportation funding. McCarthy didn’t rule out that possibility, but he made clear his chamber had already passed a more-preferable five-month patch that gives Congress enough time to hammer out a longer-term, House-Senate deal.
“The five-month extension is the best bill to have so you can get a long-term bill that is fully paid for,” McCarthy said.
