Thursday, House Majority Leader and conferee Tom Delay (R-Texas) issued a press release that harshly criticized the Senate’s offer of $318 billion during the TEA-21 reauthorization conference. DeLay ripped into the overall spending level and revenue sources of the bill. “Instead of creating a fiscally responsible highway bill, the Senate is using it as a slush fund to rob other programs and raise taxes,” his press release said. Conference chairman Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) responded quickly. “Having just read the news release of my dear friend of 18 years, I have concluded that he has not read the Senate Highway Reauthorization Bill. In a five paragraph release, not one of the statements is true, not one,” Inhofe’s press release countered. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) added that the House bill provides insufficient funding and adds billions more to the deficit than the Senate bill.

At the center of the dispute are the revenue raising mechanisms in the Senate bill. DeLay considers them tax increases, while Grassley and Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), both of whom sit on the conference committee and Senate Finance Committee, say this view “unfairly [portrays] anti-tax shelter and anti-fraud provision in the highway bill as ‘tax increases.’” According to BNA an aide to DeLay said a “lot of people call things corporate loopholes when they really are tax increases.” DeLay’s comments have further complicated what already promised to be difficult negotiations between the House and Senate.