Senate negotiators announced today that they reached a tentative agreement on a multi-year, multi-billion dollar bill to fund highway construction ahead of a deadline at the end of the month when the current funding expires.
According to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California) announced a deal on a bipartisan, six-year highway bill late Tuesday morning after a weekend of negotiations on how to pay for it. The legislation hit a procedural snag after Democrats blocked proceeding to the agreement because the text of the bill hadn’t been released until a few minutes before the scheduled cloture vote.
The vote was 41-56, after which Sen. McConnell immediately entered a motion to reconsider, setting up another attempt at a Motion to Proceed (MTP) as soon as tomorrow. McConnell further suggested the Senate may work into the weekend to complete its work on highways.
The agreement includes about $45 billion in funding offsets, sufficient to finance roughly three years (or half) of the six-year bill. Some of the biggest offsets include:
- $16.3 billion from cutting the dividend rate paid by the Federal Reserve to large banks
- $9.0 billion from selling off a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR)
- $4.0 billion from indexing customs user fees to inflation
For a full summary of the offsets, provided by the Senate Finance Committee, click here.
According to Senator Reid, Democrats will meet on Wednesday morning to discuss the specifics of the highway bill.
Although House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday that the Senate should take up the House bill ("House GOP Unveils Short-Term Highway Funding Extension"), Senator McConnell said he expected the House would take up a long-term bill if it is passed out of the Senate.
AEM joined 67 other groups in signing a letter in support of today’s agreement. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among other groups, also urged senators to support cloture.
(Updated 7/21/2015)
