Senate and House Republicans are heading to a showdown over transportation spending.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to pass a six-year highway deal before Thursday to give the House time to take it up before the August recess, according to a Senate GOP leadership source.
But opposition to the Senate bill is growing on the other side of the Capitol.
House Republican leaders want the Senate to instead pass a five-month highway patch and won’t say whether they would give the Senate transportation bill a vote in their chamber.
McConnell is betting that House GOP leaders will relent once they have the bill in their laps, with the Highway Trust Fund due to expire on Aug. 1.
The House adjourns for the August recess at the end of next week.
“The House will have to make a decision. The temporary bill is just another patch,” said Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas).
McConnell tried a similar gambit in May when he attempted to jam the House with a clean extension of the National Security Agency’s surveillance authority. It blew up when he failed to muster the 60 votes needed to pass it out of the Senate.
The Senate leader was still mulling his legislative options on Thursday, but senators and aides said the most likely scenario is that he will offer the six-year highway bill as a substitute amendment on the floor Friday to get the ball rolling and then fill the amendment tree to limit the debate.
Senators and aides then expect McConnell to file cloture on an amendment to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, setting up a vote on Sunday or Monday on the controversial agency.
A Senate aide said McConnell could file cloture — the motion to end debate and proceed to a vote — on the highway bill and the underlying legislative vehicle on the same day he does so for the Ex-Im Bank amendment. That maneuver would allow the Senate to wrap up work on the highway measure and get it to the House by Wednesday.
Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said Thursday afternoon that no decisions had been made on how to proceed and cautioned there are a variety of paths under consideration.
But other Senate aides said other routes require unanimous consent, an unlikely proposition given strong conservative opposition to the Ex-Im Bank.
Lawmakers and aides said a vote on the bank may be postponed until Monday, but that could push a final vote on the highway package until Thursday unless all 100 senators agree to yield back procedural time.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he would wait to see what legislation McConnell can push through the upper chamber.
