July 24, 2014      6:05 PM
As federal highway funds run out, road construction will come to a halt says Pickett
No apparent sense of urgency in D.C. as partisan divide grinds nation's business to a halt
Congress
may or may not come to some resolution next week on a solution to fix the Highway
Trust Fund, but Rep. Joe Pickett, D-El
Paso, could hardly tell from his meeting with the state’s leading transportation
advocates on Wednesday morning.
US Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, spoke directly to the
crisis during his weekly phone call with reporters yesterday. The Senate
and House must come to consensus next week before the Congressional summer
recess, or risk running
short on payments to states on roads and bridges, come early August.
“We have
competing proposals, Senate and House, and some amendments that will be voted
on along with those two proposals,” Cornyn noted in
passing on his weekly conference call with reporters. “The House has come up
with a ‘least bad’ solution. It’s a temporary fix, but one that will take us
into next year. The big problem that we continue to wrestle with is, ‘What do
we do when the Highway Trust Fund continues to be inadequate?’ We have some
interesting ideas, none of which have gained critical mass. We need to do
better next year, after this temporary fix expires.”
By Kimberly Reeves
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Copyright July 24, 2014, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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