House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized Republicans on Thursday for passing only a five-month extension of federal transportation funding.
Facing a July 31 deadline for the expiration of current infrastructure funding, the House voted on Wednesday to approve a short-term, $8 billion extension that would carry the spending into December.
Pelosi said Thursday that Republican leaders should have opted instead to pass a long-term transportation bill like the six-year, $478 billion that has been proposed by President Obama.
{mosads}”It’s unfortunate that once again they’ve chosen to take a short-term patch. But I’m hoping that we can work together to have a full bill long before December,” she said during a press conference at the Capitol.
“It would be totally unacceptable to come back with another short- term extension,” Pelosi continued. “But we have a model, President Obama’s Grow America Act, which creates jobs and strengthens our global competitiveness.”
Lawmakers are scrambling to prevent an interruption in the nation’s transportation spending at the end of the month, but consensus has been elusive on how the new round of spending should be paid for.
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 cutback 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 nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated it will take about $100 billion, in addition to the gas tax revenue, to pay for a six-year transit bill.
Transportation advocates have pushed for a gas tax increase to pay for a long-term 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.
Democrats had offered a version of Obama’s proposal in protest of the GOP patch, but the measure was defeated.
Pelosi said Thursday that Republicans should have allowed the president’s proposal to come to the floor of the House instead of moving ahead with their temporary measure.
“We had as our motion to recommit yesterday a version of that shorter term because that’s all the money we had to cover it, in terms of stopping inversions, which produces about $35 billion for the life of our motion to recommit,” she said.
“What we really want is that bill, with some modifications, and Congress acting its will, of course, but with that fullness as well as its longevity,” Pelosi continued. “As soon as the Senate gets that bill, we are anticipating, and it is what was represented to us, that they will put the Ex-Im Bank legislation on the highway bill and send it back over to us. And then the House would be able to act upon that. But we look forward to that happening.”
Senators have toyed with the idea of including an extension of the controversial Export-Import Bank’s charter, which expired in June, in their version of the new highway bill.
Republicans in the House have vocally opposed the idea of adding Ex-Im to the infrastructure legislation, setting up a standoff with two weeks to go before federal transportation funding runs out.