The panel’s session comes on the heels of a House Republican proposal to shore up the highway fund for a year by allowing the U.S. Postal Service to end Saturday deliveries and putting the savings into infrastructure projects—a plan ridiculed and dismissed by two Senate committee leaders.
“Strange” and “unworkable” was the response of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “This idea is a jobs killer which does not even fund the Highway Trust Fund for a long enough period of time to provide the certainty that states, cities, and businesses need.”
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del., called the House GOP idea “a nonstarter” that “kicks the can down the road yet again on resolving two issues—fixing the Postal Service and the trust fund.”
But neither Boxer nor Carper offered an alternative plan for rescuing the highway fund, which will reach a zero balance by late July or early August without a significant infusion of cash.
Boxer, in her response to the House plan, did mention that her committee had done its job—a reference to its approval in May of a six-year transportation bill that would keep federal spending on highways and mass transit at current levels. But that bill did not directly address the looming Highway Trust Fund shortfall, or how to replenish it.
via Highway-Funding Crisis Has Lawmakers Scrambling – NationalJournal.com.