Pelosi urges five-month highway bill

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is urging Senate leaders to set aside their long-term highway bill and take up the five-month patch passed by the House earlier in the month.

Pelosi did not voice outright opposition to the Senate’s six-year bill, which was negotiated by her California ally Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), but argued that Congress simply doesn’t have enough time to iron out the many wrinkles in the long-term bill before the highway trust fund runs dry at the end of the month.

{mosads}”The House sent to the Senate a five-month bill to extend the trust fund … Our hope was that the Senate would put the Ex-Im Bank on our bill [and] send it back over to us,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “Instead, they’re saying that would have to be on a long-term bill, which cannot possibly be finished by the 31st of July when the authorization runs out.

“So we would hope that they would follow the path that we set here in a very bipartisan way from the House to the Senate, even though we’re reluctant to support another short-term bill,” she added. “But the fact is, July 31 is fast upon us.”

The Senate’s six-year bill, negotiated by Boxer and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has faced a bumpy road in the upper chamber, and a test vote Wednesday afternoon fell far short of the backing needed to advance the proposal.

Hours later, however, McConnell rallied the necessary support by dropping an offset provision that would have used Social Security money to fund highways. The move led more than a dozen Democrats to switch their votes, and the legislation hopped a key procedural hurdle Wednesday night by a 62-36 tally.

House Democratic leaders this week had panned the Senate highway package, not only objecting to the Social Security offset but also rejecting a long list of other pay-for provisions that remain in the bill.

“The proposed pay-fors by the McConnell bill are unacceptable across the board,” Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Wednesday.

Pelosi on Thursday echoed that concern, praising the elimination of the Social Security offset but voicing opposition to “several” other provisions paying for the bill. She didn’t name them.

Pelosi emphasized that the Senate is still in the process of amending its six-year package — “we’ll see what comes out of it,” she said — and she applauded Boxer for including “many good things in the legislation.”

But while she’s advocating a longer-term highway bill, she’s also predicting the time crunch makes it impossible to negotiate such a deal before August.

“I didn’t say I was opposed to it. I’m just saying it’s not going to be done by the end of next week,” she said. “So let’s deal with it.”

Pelosi said a long-term deal would likely require a Senate-House conference, in which case House lawmakers would want to enter the negotiations with something much broader than the five-month patch they’ve passed. That, she argued, is another reason the Senate should put aside its long-term bill and take up the House proposal instead.

“I think we would want to go to conference with something stronger than our five-month bill,” she said. “So this is going to take some time. And that’s why we’re just saying: Let’s take the time; let’s get the job done; but in the meantime, don’t let the trust fund run out, and don’t let the Ex-Im Bank expire.”

— Updated at 3:08 p.m.