Federal funding across the country is at stake. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Senate steps closer to 'highway cliff'

The Senate has passed a bill to rescue highway and transit funding that House Speaker John Boehner says he won’t accept, keeping the specter of a “highway cliff” alive with just days before Congress is set to leave for its August recess.

With both chambers having passed different versions of the bill, lawmakers will now engage in a staring contest until one side blinks. What’s at stake is federal funding for transportation projects across the country, which are in jeopardy as long as Congress is at odds.


If Congress does not act before leaving at week’s end, the Transportation Department will start slashing payments to states for transportation projects on August 1 — a dynamic the Senate action Tuesday evening brings even closer as time dwindles.

On Tuesday evening, senators adopted two key changes to an $11 billion bill to shore up the ailing Highway Trust Fund before passing it on a 79-18 vote.

But the real test vote came earlier in the evening, when senators voted 71-26 for an amendment from Finance Committee leaders Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that stripped the House language and instead pasted in a slightly different bill that would raise the money needed to keep the fund afloat, primarily by replacing some of the money from pension smoothing with tax compliance language.

( Also on POLITICO: White House plans highway fund overdrive)

The House has several options before it. Lawmakers could take up the Senate bill — as soon as Wednesday, if a “same day” rule is used — strip it of its provisions and again paste in the text of the bill the House previously passed. It could make some modifications to the bill and send it back to the Senate. Or it could simply clear the Senate-passed bill — the least likely option of the three.

That didn’t stop some transportation groups from immediately calling on the House to endorse the newly passed Senate bill — on Thursday evening Bill Graves, the president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, issued a statement saying his group urges “the House to follow suit and to pass the Senate’s Highway Trust Fund fix and then get on to the work of passing a long-term highway bill when Congress returns from recess.”

It was unclear Tuesday evening exactly what path the House might take, but in any case the two chambers are likely to spar until the very last minute, with pressure ramping up as lawmakers get increasingly eager to leave for their long August break.

Beyond the pay-for changes, senators also voted 66-31 to sunset the policy and funding extension in December, a big difference from the May 2015 cutoff contained in the House version.

That amendment, from Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), EPW surface transportation panel Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Republican Bob Corker (Tenn.), is meant to force Congress to act on a long-term transportation bill this year. A number of lawmakers and lobbyists think that it would be easier to win approval for a gas tax increase or other funding solution in the lame duck session, although Boehner and Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) have ruled that out.

( POLITICO'S Morning Transportation tipsheet)

Hours before the Senate votes, Boehner vowed to reject changes to the pay-fors that cleared the House earlier this month.

“If the Senate sends the highway bill over here with those provisions in it, we’re going to strip it out and put the House-passed provisions back in and send them back to the Senate,” Boehner said Tuesday after a GOP caucus meeting.

The White House offered its support for the House-passed bill when the House voted on it several weeks ago, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign whatever stopgap measure emerges from Congress this week.

While advocates of a long-term bill were cheering at the vote to end the extension in December, the strategy of forcing Congress to act again this year faces a number of obstacles.

Republicans would be unlikely to back any major policy change, holding out for possibly winning the Senate or increasing their advantage in the House. Boehner and Shuster have both publicly opposed legislative action in the lame duck.

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over transportation spending, said Tuesday that Congress would face a tough task in coming up with a long-term bill in the coming months.

“I think we’ll need more time than that to come up with a long-term solution, so I’m not inclined to support that,” she said of the Boxer-Corker-Carper proposal.

Before passage, senators also voted down separate amendments from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to largely eliminate the gas tax and give states more power over transportation decisions, and from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) to waive environmental reviews for reconstruction of disaster-damaged roads and bridges.

The transportation industry has been near-unanimous in scolding Congress for shirking its duty, and a growing number of lawmakers are talking about the need to act on a multi-year reauthorization.

ATA, one of the many groups calling for a long-term bill, issued a statement within minutes of the vote on the Boxer-Corker-Carper amendment.

“ATA believes the quickly passing a long-term, well-funded highway bill is in our national interest and we believe that a short-term patch to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent is the best way to achieve that,” Graves said.

A six-year bill, which had been the norm in transportation policy in past decades, would cost around $100 billion. Congress last passed a full six-year bill in 2005.

Kevin Robillard contributed to this report.