Dive Brief:
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The success of a long-anticipated, multi-year bill to fund highway construction could depend on the fate of a flurry of controversial amendments involving Planned Parenthood, the defunct Export-Import Bank and Obamacare.
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U.S. Senate negotiators on Tuesday announced a tentative agreement on a multi-year deal that would reauthorize the Highway Trust Fund before it expires at the end of the month, but Democrats delayed its passage Tuesday to buy more time to review it.
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By the end of Tuesday, some Republican senators — who are also 2016 presidential candidates — were jockeying to tie the bill’s passage to the headline-grabbing amendments. “I can’t believe that they’d put an abortion issue on a highway bill,” said lead negotiator Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA.
Dive Insight:
A permanent solution to transportation funding is considered a “must-pass,” as the federal funding authority for highways and bridges, which Congress has bolstered with dozens of temporary infusions of cash over half a dozen years, expires at the end of the month.
GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida, and their colleagues Ted Cruz of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have seized the chance to use the very public platform to pass or defeat contentious legislation that would not get as much attention as stand-alone bills.
Democrats appear open to allowing at least some of the proposed amendments into the debate on transportation funding, according to Politico. But their sponsors seem willing to let the highway bill die if they don’t get their way on these pet issues, according to political analysts.
Earlier this month, AGC Chief Economist Ken Simonson said political uncertainty over transportation funding is undermining the construction industry’s recovery.
