Congress is hurtling toward an imminent funding cliff for highways and bridges with no apparent plan to avoid a summertime construction shutdown.

There are emerging divisions between House and Senate GOP leaders, who now have fewer than six weeks to deal with a vexing highway problem that’s been unsolved for seven years and costs billions just to keep on life support past July 31.


In the House, Republicans have basically given up on finding the tens of billions of dollars they’d need for a long-term fix for the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges. Instead, they’re mulling how to pay for the latest punt. But on the other side of the Capitol, Senate Republicans refuse to admit defeat, even though they have yet to come up with the huge sums of money they’d need for a major extension.

But blowing the deadline, which would shut down road and bridge construction projects across the nation, isn’t an acceptable option for GOP leaders. So top Republicans have started combing the budget, trying to squeeze out any savings to cobble together a bill that would at least put the highway trust funds on firmer financial ground for a year or two, perhaps longer.

“There’s a pathway to get this done so we don’t do it again in December. It’s not going to be a six-year bill, if we can do three or four years, it will be a big improvement over what we’re doing,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, a member of party leadership who also chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.

It won’t be easy. Republicans need to come up with $11 billion just to get from August until the end of year. Even then, the GOP would have to revisit highway money in the heat of the presidential race, when raising new taxes or making major spending cuts would be extraordinarily difficult.

Senior lawmakers say they are aiming for a funding bill that covers up to four years, which would cost as much as $60 billion just to extend current highway spending levels. But Democrats, along with some Republicans, argue a flat funding extension isn’t nearly enough money to repair the nation’s aging infrastructure.

But even extending current spending levels for a few years would be a major accomplishment and Republicans want to to avoid kicking the highway can down the road. Senate GOP leaders reason it may make more sense to take their lumps now and knock another troublesome deadline off their calendar after Homeland Security funding and the PATRIOT Act deadline tripped up Republican leaders.

But nothing is easy when lawmakers are talking about a highway and public transportation program that spends more than $50 billion a year — or about $15 billion more than the federal gas tax brings in.

Congress has failed to address that shortfall since it began in 2008, and lawmakers have instead relied on short-term patches and stopgaps. No one on Capitol Hill wants to raise the gas tax, save for a bipartisan clutch of lawmakers like Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), so how exactly Congress can find tens of billions remains the biggest problem.

Senate Republicans from a quartet of committees have been meeting privately for months in an effort to spread the burden of finding new savings beyond just the Senate Finance Committee and come up with a long-term fix.

But Republicans are unwilling or unable to share what money they have come up with thus far, beyond vague promises that there is enough money in the federal budget that can be reprogrammed or reprioritized to support the federal infrastructure program without raising taxes.

One source said the focus remains on finding the most “painless” way to pay for it, rather than taking a political leap. Asked if that means spending cuts likely to turn off Democrats almost immediately, Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) replied: “Not necessarily.”

“We’re looking for areas where money isn’t being used, can be used for better purposes or it’s just there for the taking,” Hatch said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s very, very hard. “

But while Hatch believes a long-term bill of as many as four years is more likely than another short-term patch, his counterpart on the other side of the Capitol is taking a much dimmer view.

“It seems to me a general fund transfer is unavoidable this summer,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Wednesday. “We’ve got to find an interim measure. We’ve got to figure out what the bridge is, the financing bridge.”

But that presents its own complications. Corker and a number of Senate Republicans won’t vote for a short-term bill. And Senate Democrats have indicated they could try to line up votes to block a highway patch in July if Republicans haven’t taken concrete steps toward a long-term solution.

Indeed, Democrats have been needling Republicans for weeks about the highway bill and are preparing to make it their primary messaging plank of the summer. Led by Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, party leaders say they won’t take a bill that just extends current funding for highways, informing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that they want “robust increases for highways, transit, passenger rail and safety programs.”

On Wednesday, Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) accused McConnell of running down the clock and preparing to punt on highway funding as Reid himself and other congressional leaders have done repeatedly over the past decade, save for a two-year bill Congress scrounged together in 2012.

“This is straight out of the Republicans’ manufactured crisis playbook. They have written the book and they’re adding chapters to it every week,” Reid said. “When the deadline is imminent, the Republican leader will offer yet another short-term extension to stave off another disaster of his own making.”

But there are some indications that Democrats are giving Republicans room to work on highways over the next six weeks after floating a strategy of blocking short-term bills longer than a month, a tactic intended to make the GOP come up with a couple billion every month if they don’t propose a long-term solution.

That strategy is still an option, but for now, Democrats are using a carrot rather than a stick — at least in comparison to their confrontational stance on other spending matters.

“We are trying to do this on the positive side rather than issue threats,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who floated blocking short-term bills in a bicameral leadership meeting two weeks ago. “We’re giving them plenty of time to start an orderly process that we will cooperate with, so let’s see if this works.”

Republicans also have their own carrot to tempt Democrats with: the Export-Import Bank, which expires at the end of June. GOP leaders are mulling allowing a vote to attach a revival of the Ex-Im Bank to the transportation bill, although they have yet to commit to anything.

“McConnell’s talking about [tying it to] transportation; that’s not real ’til it’s real,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a member of Democratic leadership.

Another scheduling quirk could bleed into the transportation debate if Congress remains stalled on a fast-track trade bill. House leaders have lined up a self-imposed deadline on trade for the end of July, aligning the measure with the highway bill and creating the possibility, on the calendar at least, for a trade-transportation megadeal.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats have suggested their party’s defeat of a fast-track trade bill in the House last week could help them push for a “robust” highway bill. But leaders in both parties said that would be too messy. Their preference is to deal with trade this month, so leaders can focus on a long-term highway bill that will be hard enough on its own to deliver by the end of July.

“I can’t conceive of that right now,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) of a trade-highway package. “But I wouldn’t eliminate the possibility.”

Kathryn A. Wolfe contributed to this report.