House and Senate leaders have reached a deal that averts a looming shutdown of federal highway and aviation programs. hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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The agreement clears the way for passage next week of a single, short-term bill that extends operating authority for the Federal Aviation Administration through the end of January and highway and transit assistance programs through the end of March, Rep. John Mica of Florida, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said in an interview.
Republicans have agreed not to include any spending cuts or contentious policy provisions in the bill, Mica said.
In exchange, Senate Democrats have made concessions involving some of the more difficult issues that been holding up passage of a long-term funding bill for the FAA, Mica said. He declined to elaborate on what those concessions entail.
“This wouldn’t be done if there weren’t terms that satisfied both sides,” Mica said. “It’s a positive step.”
Republicans plan to bring a bipartisan bill extending both programs to the House floor for a vote on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, a House GOP leadership said. The aide, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named.
Vince Morris, a spokesman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, declined to comment on the substance of the negotiations.
“We are still awaiting details on a final package,” Morris said. “We want a (long-term) FAA bill and if we don’t have that, we want a clean extension to buy us time to work out the differences.”
The last long-term FAA funding bill expired in 2007. The agency has been limping along since then under a series of 21 short-term extensions because the House and Senate have been unable to reach agreement on half dozen or so contentious issues.
The FAA was forced to partially shut down for two weeks this summer because Senate Democrats balked at passing a short-term extension bill. House Republicans had added a provision to the bill eliminating air service subsidies for 13 rural communities. Democrats said they didn’t want to set a precedent allowing the House steamroll policy changes that hadn’t been negotiated with the Senate by attaching them to a must-pass bill.
Mica acknowledged at the time that he had attached the spending cuts in part to get Senate Democrats to negotiate a deal on a GOP provision in the long-term bill that would make it more difficult for airline workers to unionize.

AP