Week ahead: Crunch time for highway talks

The House returns after taking a breather with attention shifting to transportation, trade and completing spending bills before a Dec. 11 deadline. 

Members of a House and Senate conference committee will plug away on a six-year, $325 billion federal highway spending bill that includes a five-year reauthorization of the controversial Export-Import Bank.

The deadline to reach an agreement is Nov. 20, when current transportation funding runs out.

Ex-Im’s inclusion in the transportation bill virtually reassures its reauthorization, giving the bank new life through the end of 2019. 

The bank guarantees loans for U.S. companies doing business in foreign countries.

House conservatives temporarily succeeded in shutting down the bank, which they call “corporate welfare,” when its charter expired at the end of June. 

But a bipartisan group in the House employed a rarely used procedural tactic — a discharge petition — that forced a vote on reauthorizing the bank. The bill passed the House in a 313-118 vote.

House and Senate appropriators are expected to keep working on spending legislation that needs to be approved by Dec. 11. 

Meanwhile, trade — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in particular —  will be back in the spotlight here and abroad. 

House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) will begin a series of listening sessions on parts of the sweeping 12-nation agreement. 

He is planning to hold multiple weekly sessions on the TPP for panel Democrats. 

President Obama has announced his intention to sign the agreement, setting off a 90-day period for public and congressional review. 

Obama and administration officials have been aggressive in building support for the massive trade pact, which covers about 40 percent of the global economy. 

Obama will be promoting the trade deal on a three-country trip. He’ll stop at the Group of 20 summit in Turkey, followed by visits to the Philippines and Malaysia. 

The Philippines is in preliminary talks to join the pact.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership will help generate higher wages, safer workplaces, fairer competition, and a cleaner environment — standards I will highlight as I travel from the G-20 to the Philippines and Malaysia,” Obama said in an op-ed in The Financial Times on Thursday. 

As far as timing here in the United States, the Obama administration is trying to move as quickly as possible to push the deal through Congress. 

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said Thursday that “the president made clear he’d like to get this done as early as possible next year, and we’re going to consult with Congress about what the most appropriate time is to bring it forward for a vote.”

On Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will join the Economic Policy Institute to discuss a report about women in the workforce who are being paid less than men despite obtaining more education.

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