Ryan to Senate: Don’t mess with highway bill

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is calling for the Senate to pass the House’s $8 billion transportation funding patch “without any unrelated measures.”

Lawmakers are facing a July 31 deadline for the expiration of current infrastructure funding, and senators have toyed with the idea of including an extension of the Export-Import Bank’s charter in their version of the new highway bill.

The House voted Wednesday to approve a short-term deal, which lasts until December, in part to preempt the Senate from attaching Ex-Im. 

{mosads}Ryan said after the temporary patch was approved on a 312-119 vote in the House that the Senate should follow suit and send the lower chamber back a clean highway funding extension. 

“The House has now taken the first step to providing the stability and predictability that our highway program needs,” he said in a statement. 

“This plan gives us our best opportunity to produce and pass a long-term bill to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, and other infrastructure this year,” Ryan continued. “This is the right approach, and the Senate should move quickly to adopt this extension — without any unrelated measures — so that we can provide some certainty and get to work on a multi-year plan.”

The fight over whether reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank, which expired in June, should be added to the highway bill comes as lawmakers are scrambling to prevent an interruption in the nation’s transportation spending. 

The Department of Transportation has warned that its Highway Trust Fund will dip below a mandatory critical level of $4 billion at the end of the month. The agency has said crossing that threshold will necessitate a cut-back on payments to state and local governments. 

Congress has been grappling since 2005 with a transportation funding shortfall that is estimated to be about $16 billion per year, and lawmakers have not passed a transportation bill that lasts longer than two years during that span. 

The 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal gas tax has been the main source of transportation funding for decades, but the tax has not been increased since 1993 and more fuel-efficient cars have sapped its buying power. The federal government typically spends about $50 billion per year on transportation projects, but the gas tax only brings in approximately $34 billion annually.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated it will take about $100 billion, in addition to the gas tax revenue, to pay for a six-year transportation funding bill.

Transportation advocates have pushed for a gas tax increase to pay for a long-term transportation bill, but Republican lawmakers have ruled out a tax hike. 

The patch that was approved by the House relies instead on $3 billion worth of savings from Transportation Security Administration fees and $5 billion in tax compliance measures to fund road projects through Dec. 18. 

The Senate, meanwhile, has worked on a longer, six-year, $275 billion transportation funding measure, but lawmakers in the upper chamber have not yet revealed how their legislation would be paid for — and they have floated the idea of adding the Ex-Im bank to it. 

The combination of the transportation and Ex-Im issues has resulted in strange bedfellows, as conservatives who normally oppose transportation patches are supporting the House’s version of the extension because they are vehemently against reviving the Ex-Im bank. 

“Heritage Action is opposed to this $8 billion bailout,” Dan Holler, the group’s communications director, said in a statement after the House vote on Wednesday. 

“That said, the bill appears to be a play call made by opponents of the Export-Import Bank, including Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Chairman Paul Ryan and Chairman Jeb Hensarling, to ensure the Senate does not jam the House,” Holler continued. “It is incumbent upon them — and anybody who opposes Washington’s corrupt practice of favoritism — to ensure Ex-Im remains dead.”

Ex-Im supporters have said, meanwhile, that the bank’s charter should be renewed however possible, even if it has to be attached to the must-pass highway bill. 

“By allowing the Ex-Im Bank to lapse, Congress has unilaterally disarmed U.S. manufacturers and exporters and allowed their overseas competitors to thrive,” Exporters for Ex-Im Coalition said in a statement when the charter was allowed to lapse. 

“Without Ex-Im, many U.S. companies will lose work and many U.S. workers could eventually lose their jobs,” the group continued. “The private banking sector has made it clear that they will not step in to fill this void. Voters sent lawmakers to Washington to lead our nation to greater prosperity and global leadership, not to undermine manufacturers and job creators.”