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Senate invokes cloture on $109B transportation bill
The Senate overwhelmingly voted to end debate on its $109 billion transportation bill Thursday, setting in motion a march toward a final vote on the measure as early as next week.
In an 85-11 vote, the Senate invoked cloture on the measure, which has been dubbed the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century bill.
The vote to proceed on the measure on Thursday was expected, but the margin was larger than sponsor Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicted in the minutes before lawmakers began casting their ballots.
"Maybe I'm just dreaming here, but I'm hoping for well over 60 votes to go forward," she said.
By the time the voting was finished, Boxer was lauding the bipartisanship that led to the bill winning 85 votes.
"This is a tremendous vote — to move forward with one of the most important jobs bills we could move in this session," Boxer said. "[T]his is a good vote. Now the true test comes as we have a lot of work to do to complete this legislation, to make it real, to get that certainty out there to get these jobs going."
Boxer warned lawmakers to not offer unnecessary amendments to the bill, saying it could get bogged down in what she called "extraneous matters."
"Please do not mess up this bill," she said.
Boxer said she and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the ranking member on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, would oppose amendments unless they both agreed they would add to the transportation bill.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) acknowledged the uncertainty of passing the transportation bill. Democrats have criticized the bill for being too stingy, while some conservative groups have said it spends too much money.
"Will it pass? For the good of the country, I sure hope so," Boehner said during a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Thursday.
"But that’s not up to me, that’s up to the House," he quickly added.
In the Senate, Boxer and Inhofe were praising each other for working together on the transportation bill despite their disagreements on virtually everything else.
"How could you and I agree and feel so strongly about infrastructure when we have such diverse beliefs," Inhofe said to Boxer before the cloture vote.
"We could go on and on on these debates ... it'd be like 'Crossfire,'" Boxer countered. "But…we have decided to get a bill that is fair. We are here as partners in this bill. We are not partners in a lot of things."
The Senate transportation bill, which was approved by four Senate committees before Thursday's vote, includes a package of $9.6 billion in offsets from closing tax loopholes to supplement the roughly $36 billion per year that is brought in from the federal gas tax, the traditional funding source for transportation bills.
Senate Democrats have chosen to pay for the new spending by closing tax loopholes to counter a House Republican proposal that would tie spending to revenue the federal government would gain from expanded domestic oil-and-gas drilling.
