Senate Passes 2-Year Transportation Bill [View all]

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Source: NYT

The Senate easily approved a two-year, $109 billion transportation and infrastructure bill on Wednesday, putting pressure on House Republicans to set aside their stalled version and pass the Senate’s before the federal highway trust fund expires at the end of the month.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, extolled the measure, passed on a bipartisan vote of 74 to 22, as “a jobs bill in the true sense of the word.”

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But the nearly three million jobs expected to be “saved or created” by the measure largely come from construction jobs that stand to be lost if federally financed projects grind to a halt on April 1, when money from the highway trust fund could no longer be used.

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The Senate bill, written by one of the chamber’s most liberal Democrats, Senator Barbara Boxer of California, and one of its most conservative Republicans, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, consolidates 196 federal transportation programs to about a dozen, while giving more flexibility to the states to decide transportation priorities. But it largely keeps the scope of federal highway, transit and other surface transportation projects intact. Senators kept the duration of the bill short, to two years, because of the difficulty in paying for its programs as gasoline tax revenues slide.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/us/politics/senate-passes-transportation-bill-putting-pressure-on-house.html

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Roll call vote: http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/senate/2/48

The 74 votes included: 52 D + 22 R