Posted on 07/27/2015 12:35:31 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The House will not vote on a multi-year Senate highway bill that revives the now-expired Export-Import Bank, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday.
“We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy declared to a roomful of reporters in his office.
Instead, McCarthy urged the Senate to take up a short-term House-passed bill which extends federal highway funding for five months, without renewing the Ex-Im Bank charter. He called the House bill the “best option” for Congress before money for highways, bridges and mass transit runs out on Friday.
McCarthy’s declaration is a blow not only to the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) had teamed up to craft the bipartisan, long-term highway bill.
It’s also a blow to backers of the Ex-Im Bank, who had hoped the 81-year-old institution would be revived by catching a ride on the back of the Senate transportation bill. The charter for the bank, which provides loan guarantees to help U.S. corporations sell goods overseas, expired on June 30.
The Senate transportation bill authorizes highway funding for six years, but only provides three years in funding.
McCarthy, who controls the House floor schedule, said the lower chamber plans to leave for the August recess on Thursday. And he said it’s not fair for the Senate to send the House a massive 1,000-plus-page bill just days before the funding deadline.
Upon hearing about McCarthy’s remarks, Boxer, shot back at the fellow Californian, saying the House should follow the Senate’s lead and stay in session a week longer rather than decamp for the summer recess.
“You know what, we’re staying an extra week in August. You can stay an extra week in August. That’s not such a terrible thing,” Boxer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
McCarthy “says don’t send us a bill because we’re going home. Well, that’s their choice.
“If the House chooses to go out on vacation or a work period of whatever they do, that's their business. But it's our job to fix the problems we're facing,” Boxer said.
Another way out of the funding mess is an even shorter-term highway bill, perhaps one that provides just two or three months of transportation funding. McCarthy didn’t rule out that possibility, but he made clear his chamber had already passed a more-preferable five-month patch that gives Congress enough time to hammer out a longer-term, House-Senate deal.
“The five-month extension is the best bill to have so you can get a long-term bill that is fully paid for,” McCarthy said.
This story was updated at 3:23 p.m.
ExIm is in the highway bill, yeah that sounds germane - not
Good.
But McWattle had a deal!
The HOR is all up for election every two years, so anything they do can get them voted out soon. If they do their job, they’re supposed to control the purse strings. Maybe they’ll start doing their job.
FUBB.
You worked hard to get that title.
> ““We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy declared to a roomful of reporters in his office.”
Senate to McCarthy:
OH YES YOU WILL! WHERE’S BOEHNER? GET BOEHNER OUT OF THE HIS DRUNKEN STUPOR AND TELL HIM TO GET ON THIS OR ELSE, OR ELSE THE GOODS THAT ARE ON HIM WILL BE RELEASED!
Well, at least some people in the House have a survival instinct.
Boxer can’t fix the problems with the country unless she and the entire Democrat coven resigns.
Pelosi and Boehner want the short-term bill to give them time to come up with more ways to spend more money.
But it is good news the Ex-Im is dead for now.
Thank Cruz for that. His efforts made it impossible for the House to pass it now.
It shouldn’t be in the highway bill. But Republicans are idiots for letting the bank expire. Of all the things Republicans could cut, they cut a bank that has generated $7 billion in profits for the Treasury in the last 20 years, and which helps our exporters.
I guess their Chinese masters needed more help competing against Boeing so they ordered the bank terminated.
It shouldn’t be in the highway bill. But Republicans are idiots for letting the bank expire. Of all the things Republicans could cut, they cut a bank that has generated $7 billion in profits for the Treasury in the last 20 years, and which helps our exporters.
I guess their Chinese masters needed more help competing against Boeing so they ordered the bank terminated.
Sure thing.
Boehner is getting the phone call in 3, 2, 1.........
McCarthy hasn't been around long enough to get rich. He knows his plans are out the door if the base flees in 2016.
The short stint the House Pubbies were in the minority from 2007-2011 must have left an impression on them.
Well Kevin, all I can say is "you better not screw this up, because if you do, you will be in the minority in 2017."
Well, well.
McConnell in 2020 is what I meant.
Wait the bank is a good thing?
The Bank is a good idea and I’d rather see it reformed than eliminated.
But I’d rather it be eliminated than continue to operate so corruptly.
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