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In The News
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Tuesday, 03 July 2012 12:40 |
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President Obama signed the tenth extension of the last federal highway funding law late Friday--and plans to sign the final legislation as soon as it hits his desk...hopefully this week.
This measure, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) is largely a long term extension--27 months instead of the traditional six year bill.
The good stuff in the bill includes elimination of 70 different programs under the highway title (there are still 30). The bad stuff is the funding, $101.3 billion, most of which comes federal motor fuel excise taxes, but not all, with some serious hoop-jumping done by Congress in borrowing about $18.8 billion from a variety of sources with up to a ten-year payback--for a two-year bill.
Both Senators Boxer (chair of the EPW committee which wrote most of the bill) and Feinstein voted for the bill. If you want to see how your Congressman voted go to http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2012/roll451.xml . The vote was 352 ayes and 52 nays in the House. The Senate vote was equally lopsided at 74-19 (all the noes were from the GOP.)
The Republicans caved on their demands for immediate approval of the Keystone Pipeline Project and a solution to the use of coal ash in highway concrete. They got off the hook on the standoff over student loans, maintaining interest rates of 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates that would have doubled for new loans beginning on Sunday if Congress hadn't acted.
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