WASHINGTON — After years of tortuous negotiations, Congress is poised to pass energy and highway bills that are designed to show its concern about high fuel costs and traffic congestion -- but that also have prompted criticism about excessive spending and pork-barrel politics.
The highway bill costs $286.5 billion -- $2.5 billion above the target set by the White House -- and contains thousands of projects sought by lawmakers for their districts.
The energy bill provides for at least $11.5 billion in tax breaks. President Bush had favored $6.7 billion in tax breaks.
Nevertheless, Bush is expected to sign both bills.
With lawmakers preparing for their summer recess, the president and the Republican-controlled Congress are eager to promote the bills -- along with passage early Thursday of Bush's top trade initiative, the Central American Free Trade Agreement -- as among their major achievements for the year.
The House approved the energy bill Thursday and had been expected to pass the highway bill. But a last-minute obstacle -- an obscure six-line provision, inserted by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the conferees on the measure, that would reopen a long-closed 11,500-foot runway on an Air Force base in Montana -- delayed passage until at least this morning.
The Senate is expected to pass the energy and highway bills today.
Supporters call the bills important to the nation's economic growth. But critics question whether Congress has forgotten the federal budget deficit.
Predicting that the highway bill will set a record for lawmakers' projects -- more than 5,000 of them -- Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said, "It's kind of an ignominious achievement for Republicans."
Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group in Arlington, Va., said Bush's intention to sign both bills, even though they are more costly than he wanted, "demonstrates how difficult it will be to stick with the optimistic assumptions in the budget. The trick with both bills was to exceed the president's budget but not by enough to attract a veto.... A billion here, a billion there.... When does it become real money these days?"
Addressing the cost of the highway bill, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan noted Thursday that lawmakers had "come significantly down" from spending that was previously proposed.
