Top Republican red-lights U.S. Senate highway funding measure

By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate hit a bumpy patch on Monday in its drive to keep highway and transit construction projects funded while also trying to revive an agency that promotes American exports. In a case of Senate maneuvers linking two otherwise unrelated issues, a pivotal vote on the Export-Import Bank was expected late on Monday, while a Senate highway funding bill was rebuffed by the No. 2 House of Representatives Republican. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy pushed Congress closer to an August 1 cut-off of federal highway construction money, with no clear plan to restore it, saying he would not accept a multi-year Senate plan to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. "We're not taking up the Senate bill," McCarthy told reporters, adding that the House intends to start a five-week summer recess on Thursday after passing its own five-month extension of transportation funding earlier this month. McCarthy said the "best option" to ensure that projects stay funded is for the Senate to take up the House-passed extension. He said there was too little time before the recess to consider the 1,030-page Senate bill, which authorizes $350 billion in spending over six years but contains actual funding for only about three years' worth of projects. "I'm not sure they'll be done with it," he said of the Senate's proposal. But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he would proceed with the Senate's multi-year approach this week. "Time is running out to get this bill through Congress," McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor. "We're up against a deadline at the end of the week. Jobs are on the line." The highway fund pays for about half of the country's highway and transit projects and is about to go broke because lawmakers have been too fearful of a voter backlash to raise the gasoline tax upon which the fund historically has relied. The highway funding jam-up also made it less likely that the idled Ex-Im Bank will be revived this week as part of a highway funding bill. The trade bank's next chance to resume lending and guarantee operations would not likely come until September. The Senate late on Monday will vote to formally attach a renewal of Ex-Im's expired charter to the transport measure, a move that has strong support. House Speaker John Boehner has pledged to take up any such legislation from the Senate under an open amendment process. (Reporting by David Lawder and Richard Cowan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)