Parties point fingers over highway funds

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Monday each blamed the other’s party for the lack of a long-term highway fix ahead of an end-of-the-month deadline. 

“The way it is now, two-month extensions, six-month extensions, it just doesn’t work,” the Nevada Democrat said. “It’s inefficient and very, very expensive.”

{mosads}Senators are expected to pass a two-month extension of federal transportation funding this week before leaving town for a week-long Memorial Day recess. 

Hatch said it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were to blame for the lack of a long-term deal. 

He said that he had been working with House lawmakers on a package that would get the infrastructure program through the end of the year, but that Democrats quickly dismissed the proposal. 

“Unfortunately [Democratic] cooperation didn’t last,” he said. “In fact it never really began.”

The Utah Republican suggested that Democrats had two reasons for backing a short-term patch to the highway program. 

The first, he said, was to ultimately win GOP support for raising taxes to pay for new highway spending.

“They think that if they make Republicans vote on highway funding over and over again, we can be cajoled into accepting their preferred solution, which is a large tax hike,” he said.

“Second, they think that by maintaining a constant state of chaos and uncertainty, they can make the Republican-led Congress look bad,” Hatch added.

Reid, however, tied the short-term extension to what he suggested was a Republican unwillingness to fund infrastructure programs. 

“Look at what happened with Amtrak,” he said. “House Republicans chose to cut Amtrak, just hours after the derailment, by a quarter of a billion dollars. Who could help being astonished by this act of carelessness?”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) put the two-month extension of the highway funding directly onto the Senate calendar last week, allowing it to skip going through the committee process. His move would allow for the Senate to vote on the legislation this week.