WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) released the following statement this evening after the Senate passed legislation, advanced by the House of Representatives, that will fund the Highway Trust Fund through next May, undermining the effort to pass a comprehensive transportation appropriations bill this year that will solve the problem in the long-term:

“I had hoped for a shorter extension which would have kept the pressure on Congress to deal with this issue in a comprehensive way before the end of the year,” Senator King said. “But when the choice is between something or nothing, I’m certainly not going to stick the American people with nothing and make them pay the price for the House’s bad decision. This bill will replenish the fund and ensure that vital construction projects will continue and the resulting jobs will be preserved, but I would have much preferred our Senate bill, which does the same thing but in a fiscally responsible way that would have also forced Congress to find a much-need long-term solution.”

Prior to Tuesday’s vote on this issue, Senator King spoke on the Senate floor in favor of a bipartisan amendment authored by Senators Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and Tom Carper (D-Del.), which was adopted, and that would responsibly pay for the extension and force Congress to stop shirking its responsibility to pass a long-term transportation bill this year.

Specifically, the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment would have:

• Extend federal transportation program authorizations only through December 19, 2014 to ensure that Congress remains focused on the critical and urgent task of passing a fully-funded long-term solution to the Highway Trust Fund crisis before the end of the year;
• Provide sufficient funding to the Department of Transportation to reimburse states for highway and transit projects through December 2014;
• Strike the pension smoothing provisions that generate revenue in the 10-year window that would likely cost taxpayers money in the long run, and;
• Include revenue provisions from the Preserving America’s Transit and Highways (PATH) Act reported out of the Senate Finance Committee that contain bipartisan tax compliance measures.

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