Senate Names Transportation Conferees

The Senate has named 14 of its members to serve on the conference committee tasked with ironing out House-Senate differences on a long-term transportation funding bill.

House leaders have yet to announce who they will appoint to the conference committee.

In March, the Senate passed a bipartisan, two-year transportation reauthorization bill but the House was unable to agree on a bill of its own.

In order to move reauthorization forward, House Republican leaders produced enough votes to pass a new temporary funding extension so they could send it to conference on the Senate bill. The extension would fund highway and transit programs until Sept. 30.

But the extension contained a provision that would mandate the Keystone Pipeline be built, which is unlikely to win Senate support.

The Senate conferees include 8 Democrats and 6 Republicans, all of whom voted for the pipeline when it was voted on in the Senate last month.

Montana Sen. Max Baucus is the only Democrat among the 8 who is backing the pipeline but he said he would not hold a long-term transportation bill hostage to the pipeline.

Besides Baucus, the other Senators appointed to the conference committee are: Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), David Vitter (R-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.).