Congress Gives Itself 90 Days to Figure Out a Real Transportation Extension
Two days before expiration, the House and Senate have
finally agreed on a 90 day extension of the federal government’s
transportation authority. From labor
unions to the Chamber of Commerce to 188 U.S. Mayors, the government’s
authority to spend money on transportation has wide ranging bipartisansupport. Expiration of the authority
would have led to myriad bad consequences including loss of funding as parts of
the gas tax expired and job loss as states struggled to fill the funding gap
left by the absence of federal money.
What
prevented the transportation bill from being passed sooner? And why did
congress pass a paltry three month extension?
The answer is straightforward: partisan gridlock in Congress. The Senate spent months on the transportation
bill, debating not whether it should be passed but what amendments to include, which
includes the debate over the Blunt Amendment, which would have amended the
transportation bill. On the House side,
Speaker Boehner tried to make a long term transportation extension a republican priority, but his bill met resistance not only from House Democrats, but also
from the more conservative Republicans who worried about the price tag of the
bill. The result of all the time the
House and Senate spent on the transportation bill: another fight three months
from now as Congress tries again to figure out how to pass a bill that everyone
is already agrees on.
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