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Federal Legislation & Regulation3/30/2012
Rail News: Federal Legislation & Regulation
Boxer: Keep pressure on House to pass Senate's surface transportation bill
Now that Congress has passed a 90-day extension of the surface transportation funding law, the Senate will continue to pressure House members to take up the Senate’s two-year, $109 billion transportation bill, said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, in a prepared statement issued yesterday.
She took House Republicans to task for not including a commitment to produce a long-term bill in H.R. 4281, the 90-day extension measure for SAFETEA-LU that passed the House by a 266-to-158 vote. The Senate passed the extension by a voice vote, and the measure is on its way to the White House for President Obama’s signature.
“Thousands of jobs are at stake, and eventually we are talking about nearly three million jobs at stake,” Boxer said. “There are many people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who want to get our bill … passed into law, and I’m going to do everything I can to keep the pressure on the Republican House to do just that.”
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said the House will produce a revised version of its five-year, $260 billion surface transportation bill when Congress returns from a two-week district work period.
