Six-Month Highway Bill Extension Now Likely in Senate (CQ Today Midday Update)
The Senate is scrapping plans for an 18-month extension of surface transportation law and is now working instead on a six-month extension, a Democratic aide and industry officials confirmed Friday.
Barbara Boxer , D-Calif., and James M. Inhofe , R-Okla., — the chairwoman and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee — were unsuccessful in persuading their colleagues to allow quick passage of an 18-month extension of the 2005 surface transportation law.
An industry official said the senators realized they would have trouble moving the administration-backed 18-month extension, so they acquiesced to a shorter term bill.
The six-month extension was touted by George V. Voinovich , R-Ohio, who said he would have blocked the 18-month bill. He says the highway and transit programs are too important to the economy to wait more than a year to fix, and he sought the shorter extension to put pressure on Congress to enact a full, multi-year reauthorization next year.
A shorter extension would be a victory for proponents of long-term transportation legislation such as the six-year, $500 billion plan being pressed by House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James L. Oberstar , D-Minn.
But a six-month extension would still leave the Senate at odds with the House, which passed a three-month extension Sept. 23. Oberstar has adamantly opposed any extension beyond the end of the year, because he wants to force Congress to take up a multiyear highway bill early in 2010.
Programs are being kept afloat within a one-month fiscal 2010 stopgap spending measure that expires Oct. 31. Congress is poised to pass another one of those measures soon, while appropriators finish the fiscal 2010 spending bills.
CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE
Oct. 23, 2009 – 1:27 p.m.
