The $8 billion package extends infrastructure spending until the end of October.
President Barack Obama scolded Congress last week at his signing of the latest federal stop gap transportation funding bill.
Washington managed to avert a shutdown of transportation construction projects with another short-term reauthorization of the surface transportation bill.
But Obama said that instead of long-term approaches which provide a level of certainty for state and local leaders, the U.S. is operating with a hand-to-mouth mindset, continually reauthorizing transportation funds for months at a time.
"Which freezes a lot of construction, which makes people uncertain, which leads to businesses not willing to hire because they don't have any long term certainty," said Obama on C-SPAN. "It's a bad way for the U.S. government to do business."
Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes agreed. He's also been calling for longer term reauthorization of federal transportation funding.
"Congress has not managed to do that for many years, and so we are stuck now with a three month authorization pushing off until October the next day of reckoning," Himes said.
"Connecticut gets about $500 million a year for the bridge and highway repair that we need to do here," Himes said. "The state of Connecticut also contributes money to a cost-sharing deal. But had we not done the three-month authorization, we'd see a stop or at least a slow-down of many projects across Connecticut, which is of course exactly the opposite of what we need."
The $8 billion package extends infrastructure spending until the end of October.
