Boxer: House Republicans ‘coming to our point of view’ on highway bill

{mosads}The House was scheduled to vote Monday evening on a 90-day extension of the transportation bill that expired in 2009, but the measure was pulled from the floor as Democrats withheld their support for suspending the rules of the House for early consideration of legislation. 

The measure is listed again on the calendar released by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) office Tuesday, but GOP leaders have said they are negotiating with Democrats on the details of a possible bipartisan extension.

“To facilitate those conversations, the House vote on an extension will occur later this week rather than tonight,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), said after the vote was rescheduled Monday.

Republicans have argued for passing a short-term version of the transportation bill to give themselves more time to create a version of their proposal for a multi-year bill that can be passed by the House. Boehner had pushed for a five-year, $260 billion that he planned to pay for with legislation increasing domestic oil drilling, but he was unable to win support for the measure within his Republican caucus.

But Boxer said “extensions are not the answer.” She argued that passing a short-term extension without addressing a shortfall in revenue brought into the Highway Trust Fund from the federal gas tax would accelerate a bankruptcy in the transportation fund.

“It’s a very bad idea,” she said. “Extensions are disasters, they are at best totally disruptive and at worse, totally chaotic, and so we are not for those.”

Boxer said of the possibility for a ninth extension of the expired transportation law that voters “know that this is completely unacceptable.

“Three-quarters of the United States Senate voted for the Senate bill and 3 million jobs are at stake and thousands of businesses,” she said. “[House Republicans] always say they want to run Congress more like a business, you tell me one business that dithers as much as they do. If businesses dithered as much as they do, they wouldn’t be businesses.”

If lawmakers do not reach an agreement on at least a temporary extension by the end of the week, the gas tax would stop being collected on March 31.