$8B road bill for short term clears House

Measure also bridges gap in vets’ care, goes to Senate

Members of the House leave the Capitol to begin their August recess Wednesday after approving stopgap funding for highways and veterans’ health care.
Members of the House leave the Capitol to begin their August recess Wednesday after approving stopgap funding for highways and veterans’ health care.

WASHINGTON -- The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to shore up federal highway aid for three months and veterans' health care before heading out of town for its August recess without considering a long-term proposal by the Senate.

In one of its last decisions before adjourning for a month, the House backed a stopgap bill that would extend spending authority for transportation programs through Oct. 29 and replenish the federal Highway Trust Fund with $8 billion -- $6 billion for roads and $2 billion for mass transit. That's enough money to keep highway and transit aid flowing to states through mid-December.

The vote was 385-34. Arkansas' four representatives, all Republicans, voted for the bill.

"Improving bridges, roads and infrastructure is critical to our economy. But we're going to need time for the House committees to do their work" on a long-term plan, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, during a news conference.

The Senate plans to take up the House bill today. Unless it is extended, authority for the Transportation Department to process aid payments to states will expire at midnight Friday.

Lawmakers said they were loath to take up yet another short-term transportation funding extension -- this will be the 34th extension since 2009.

"Here we are with another short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund," said Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. "How can businesses do any kind of planning in this country when they get one- and two- and three-month extensions?

"It's time for a long-term funding bill, and we should have done it this time," McDermott said. "We never fix anything here."

But Republicans and Democrats don't want to see transportation aid cut off, and they are eager to pass an amendment attached to their highway bill that fills a $3.4 billion hole in the Department of Veterans Affairs' budget. The money gap threatens to force the closure of hospitals and clinics nationwide.

The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, would allow the VA to use $3.35 billion from the new Veterans Choice program to pay for private health care for veterans from May 1 to Oct. 1.

Under the amendment, the VA could use up to $500 million from the Veterans Choice program to cover costs of treating the deadly hepatitis-C virus. It would require the VA to report to the House and Senate veterans committees every 14 days on how the newly authorized funds are being used.

The VA has told Congress that it may shutter hospitals unless it receives flexibility to close a $2.5 billion shortfall caused by a sharp increase in demand by veterans for health care.

Regarding transportation funding, the three-month patch puts off House action on a long-term bill, adding one more messy fight to a fall agenda already crammed with difficult, must-pass legislation.

Twelve annual spending bills face a Sept. 30 deadline. Congress also must decide whether to approve or disapprove President Barack Obama's Iran deal, and whether to pass a contentious defense policy bill that faces a veto threat from the White House. Another fight is certain over raising the nation's borrowing authority.

Spending authority for the Federal Aviation Administration expires Sept. 30. Since long-term bills to set aviation policy have yet to be introduced in either the House or the Senate, lawmakers acknowledge they will have to pass a short-term extension there as well.

"I think it will be an extremely active fall with the potential for either terrific accomplishment or a train wreck," said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of House Republican leadership.

Senate action

The Senate plans to vote today to pass its version of a highway spending authority bill that lays out policy for six years and would deliver three years of funding.

On Wednesday, the Senate's $350 billion transportation bill cleared a procedural hurdle by a vote of 65 to 35. Arkansas' senators, both Republicans, were split on invoking cloture on the bill, with John Boozman voting for and Tom Cotton voted against.

The bill would make changes to highway, transit, railroad and auto safety programs but only provides enough funds for the first three years of the six years covered by the bill. The bill also renews the Export-Import Bank, which makes low-interest loans to help U.S. companies sell their products overseas. The 81-year-old bank's charter expired June 30.

Senate GOP leaders had hoped the House would pass the long-term bill and send it to the White House before the recess. Their Republican counterparts in the House made it clear they won't be hurried into accepting the Senate measure.

Democrats say House Republican leaders refused to take up the Senate highway bill in part because they want to avoid an internal party fight over the Export-Import Bank before the August break.

Second-ranking Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that even though Boehner has said he would let the House "work its will" on legislation, the Export-Import Bank extension wasn't included in the House bill because of opposition from Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.

As many as 270 members of the 435-seat House would vote to reauthorize the bank, Hoyer said, adding, "I will yield to anyone on this floor who will say: Mr. Hoyer, you are wrong."

It has been a 10 years since Congress last passed a transportation bill that covered more than two years, even though lawmakers in both parties generally support highway and transit aid. The difficulty has been finding the money to pay for programs in a way that doesn't increase the federal deficit.

Complicating passage of a long-term transportation bill is that the president and House Republican leaders want to change corporate tax laws that encourage U.S. companies to park foreign profits overseas, and want to use the resulting revenue to fully pay for highway and transit aid. But there is no consensus on the details of the corporate tax changes, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has repeatedly tried to dampen support for that approach.

House Republicans say they will use the next three months to develop a tax plan that generates enough money to pay for a long-term highway bill.

Two key House members -- Reps. Charles Boustany, R-La., and Richard Neal, D-Mass. -- unveiled part of the plan Wednesday. It would create a special 10 percent tax bracket that would be applied to part of the income companies get from patents, formulas, inventions and other intellectual property. The current corporate income tax rate is 35 percent.

Technology firms and pharmaceutical companies would be among the beneficiaries. The goal is to slow the flow of U.S. companies that have been relocating their headquarters to foreign countries to reduce their tax bills.

Information for this article was contributed by Joan Lowy and Stephen Ohlemacher of The Associated Press and by Billy House, Kathleen Miller and Jeff Plungis of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/30/2015

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