Not as good as shutting down the Senate, but it's close
GOP Summit Fails to Find Agreement on Highway Bill
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press
Thursday, April 29, 2004; 5:29 PM
Republican lawmakers and the White House on Thursday were unable to come up with a dollar total for a much-delayed highway and transit bill touted as the biggest jobs and economic stimulus legislation Congress will consider this year.
"Lots of numbers were discussed," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., after a meeting in his office that included House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and top GOP transportation and tax-writing lawmakers.
"The general agreement is that we are going to work with numbers in a bill that can be enacted into law," Frist said.
The White House, concerned about the growing budget deficit, has rejected both the six-year, $318 billion bill approved by the Senate earlier this year and the $275 billion bill passed by the House this month. The administration has put a $256 billion ceiling on the legislation and threatened a presidential veto of anything that exceeds that and worsens the deficit.
Meanwhile, the latest extension of the previous highway bill expires Friday, and a senior Republican, Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, said Thursday he would block another extension because of what he called Democratic delaying tactics on the new bill.
The House earlier this week unanimously voted to extend the 1998-2003 act for another two months, the third such extension since the act first expired last September. The failure of the Senate to follow suit would cut off, as of Saturday, all federal highway money flowing to the states and result in the layoffs of thousands of Transportation Department employees.
