House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R) can't make it any more clear than this.
via RollCall
While the Senate rushes to passage on its more than 1,000-page, six-year highway bill, McCarthy was emphatic that the House would not consider the legislation before hitting the exits on Thursday for a five-week break.
“We’re not taking up the Senate bill,” McCarthy said.
He asked how anyone could expect them to take up the Senate highway bill in such a short amount of time. “We’re set to depart on Thursday,” he said.
It has been suspected for some time that House Republicans would not vote for the Senate version of the bill, but it's also clear now that the House will not vote for any highway bill before the end of the week.
In few words, McCarthy is telling Senate Republicans to either pass the House's 5-month extension of highway funding or be held responsible for the consequences of not doing so.
Now that McCarthy has made this clear, it remains to be seen if Mitch McConnell will forge ahead with his plan to offend as many members of Congress and the general public as possible while in the process of passing a bill that will never become law.