White House open to McConnell highway bill

The White House indicated it is open to a long-term highway bill drafted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

The administration is “closely reviewing” the legislation, including the proposed measures to pay for the highway funding and safety standards, an official said Wednesday.

{mosads}The White House also “would insist upon” a highway bill including an extension of the Export-Import Bank, press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.

House and Senate Republicans appear to be odds over how to renew federal infrastructure funding ahead of a July 31 deadline.

House Republicans, led by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (Wis.), are pushing for a five-month extension of the Highway Trust Fund.

The House’s stopgap bill is designed to buy time for Congress to find a long-term solution to fund federal road and bridge projects, which would be paid for using revenue from taxing American companies’ overseas profits.

But McConnell is pushing for a long-term extension of highway funding and does not want to use tax reform to help pay for it.

The White House has said it would support Ryan’s five-month bill but added that Congress must stop using short-term patches.

“We have expressed our frustration at the repeated short-term extensions that we believe are entirely inconsistent with the best interests of our economy and the best interests of maintaining a modern infrastructure,” Earnest said Monday.

The administration’s openness to McConnell’s bill is significant, though the legislation faces an uncertain path forward in the Senate. Democrats in the upper chamber have not yet endorsed it despite Boxer’s role in crafting it.

The six-year bill only includes offsets to pay for highway projects over the next three years, while the president has previously offered a measure that would provide full funding for all six years.

The $50 billion in offsets in McConnell’s bill does not include taxes on overseas corporate profit, which the White House wants to use to replenish the Highway Trust Fund.

Instead, it relies on a variety of funding measures including selling crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, cutting the Federal Reserve’s dividend rate, indexing customs fees to inflation and blocking Social Security payments to people with felony warrants.

The White House expressed skepticism about selling oil earlier this week.

Attaching an extension of the Export-Import Bank to the highway bill would also raise the stakes in a showdown with the House, where conservative lawmakers oppose renewing the bank’s charter.  

“If Ex-Im receives a real vote and issues like Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities, ObamaCare’s congressional exemption don’t, it is because McConnell made that decision,” said Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action.

– Updated at 2:09 p.m.