It's looking more like President Donald Trump's $200 billion infrastructure bill could pass in a lame-duck session if Congress cannot get it done before November’s midterm elections.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn all but killed the bill when he told reporters last week there isn't enough time to pass it this year due to gun legislation and other pressing issues.
“Sen. Cornyn probably knows what he's talking about given he's the number two Republican in the Senate, he's a little skeptical they don't have the bandwidth to deal with this between now and the election,” says Chuck DeVore, vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
DeVore says Democrats already don't like the idea of giving states incentive money to develop their own projects.
“They would rather just go with the old method of borrowing a lot of money and sending it down to the states and local governments with a lot of strings attached, and that way they could tell the local governments what to do with that money,” he says.
Texas officials also take issue with promoting more public-private partnerships or creating more tolls to pay back federal seed money.
“Whether it's a new bridge with a toll or a tunnel, or even something where local government enacts a tax that generates a guaranteed revenue stream that draws down that federal matching money,” says DeVore.