In a bipartisan vote, the Senate Finance Committee approved a funding plan for the Senate's two-year surface transportation reauthorization, clearing the way for the final bill to reach the Senate floor this week.

The bill passed on a 17-6 vote, with four Republicans siding with Democrats to approve the language. Although the language passed with a healthy margin, several members on both sides expressed some dissatisfaction with the suite of pay-fors, which extend beyond the traditional gas tax user fee. Among the new offsets are a tax on gas-guzzling vehicles and the closing of a loophole allowing black liquor to qualify for a cellulosic biofuel tax credit.

"Where we cannot find more revenue from the Highway Trust Fund's usual funding sources, we have focused on funding that bears a nexus to transportation. We have therefore explored funding from transportation and energy sources," said Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) in his opening statement.

"These things are hard to do, and each of us, if we were king, would craft a different package," he continued. "But we are a committee of 24 ... so the package I offer today is my best assessment of a consensus product."

The bill is still short of the $12 billion to $13 billion necessary to close a shortfall in the $109 billion reauthorization bill, and Baucus vowed that he would continue to look for the revenue. Baucus also said he would review a number of controversial provisions in the bill -- including a proposal to tax certain inherited retirement accounts -- before the bill hit the floor.

Some of the measures will also collect revenue over 10 years to pay for the two-year bill, a move Republicans criticized as a gimmick that would harm future prospects for transportation spending.

The four Republicans that voted for the bill were Olympia Snowe of Maine, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Thune of South Dakota.

Besides the gas guzzler tax, IRA tax and black liquor provision, the bill would raise money by transfers to a fund meant to clean up leaking underground storage facilities, redirecting some tariffs to the highway trust fund and a number of smaller revenue producers.

Leaders say they were forced to get creative to close the shortfall for the two-year bill with the Congressional Budget Office projecting that the Highway Trust Fund could be insolvent as early as next year.

The Senate is set to combine the Finance Committee language with bills passed out of the Environment and Public Works, Banking and Commerce committees with a cloture vote on the transportation bill set for tomorrow.

Gas tax increase praised, withdrawn

Thune raised issue with some provisions in the bill, including the last-minute inclusion of an extension of a tax benefit for commuters who take public transit. Thune said that language, along with two other extenders, belonged in a proper tax extenders package, not a cherry-picked selection in the highway bill.

Urban Democrats fought for the tax credit -- which would restore a $240 credit on par with the one offered for parking -- and defeated an amendment from Thune to strip the extenders.

Ranking member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) withdrew a controversial amendment that would have added a provision approving the Keystone XL pipeline, while replacing most of the bill's pay-fors with additional domestic energy production. The amendment would have eliminated all but the underground leak fund transfer, replacing them with expanded offshore drilling and new drilling in Alaska. Hatch said the amendment would not only raise the necessary revenue, it would "simultaneously create jobs" and allow the nation to take advantage of its domestic energy resources.

Democrats, however, struck out against the proposed pay-fors, calling them unreliable and too controversial to attach to the highway bill. Even Baucus, a Keystone supporter, said he did not want to see approval language attached to the infrastructure bill.

A number of other potentially controversial amendments were withdrawn, including one from Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) that would have raised the federal gas tax. Committee members praised Enzi for raising the dicey issue, which he said was the most common sense way to pay for the nation's infrastructure projects.

Noting that the gas tax has not been raised or indexed to inflation since being set to 18.4 cents per gallon in 1993, Enzi said that simply indexing the tax to inflation would have the tax at 64 cents per gallon this year. And with a nod to the fact that a tax increase was not a popular -- or realistic -- idea, Enzi said he was "willing to take all the flack because I think this is the right thing to do."

Throughout the markup, several senators made reference to voting for the gas tax hike, with legislators on both sides of the aisle saying they would be willing to vote for it -- but only after Enzi had agreed to withdraw it. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joked that they would "pass the amendment and kill the bill."

Likewise, Snowe pitched, then withdrew, an amendment that would set an across-the-board tax on gas and diesel, regardless of whether it was consumed domestically or exported abroad.

Among the other amendments that were withdrawn was one from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) that would have created a National Infrastructure Bank and one from Crapo that would have altered the black liquor provision. Baucus promised to work with Crapo to find a more amenable solution to that language, which concerns a byproduct from paper and pulp production.

Thune also proposed an amendment that would have removed language that allowed funding to transfer between the separate accounts for highways and mass transit.