With as many as 2.9 million new and existing jobs on the line, House Republicans are refusing to pass a transportation reauthorization bill, even after the Senate’s version of the bill overwhelmingly passed through the upper chamber in a 74-22 bipartisan vote.

The deadline for new transportation funding is June 30, and if the calendar flips to July without a compromise, as many as 1.9 million workers could lose their jobs, at least temporarily. The Senate version of the bill, if adapted, would create an additional one million new jobs as well, according to Department of Transportation projections.

So why are House Republicans holding nearly three million jobs hostage? Because they want approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to be included in the bill. This infographic gives a sense of the GOP’s priorities:

The State Department estimates that roughly 6,000 jobs would be created if the Keystone XL is approved, but as few as 20 of them will be permanent.

A long-term transportation package that would re-authorize current spending on highway construction projects and lock-in infrastructure spending for future projects appears all but dead thanks to Republican obstruction in the House of Representatives. With time running out before current authorization ends at the end of the month, House Republicans are demanding the Senate add approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to a transportation bill that already passed with widespread bipartisan support.

House and Senate negotiators have been meeting for weeks — since the Senate passed its bill, 74-22 — to work out a compromise, but the House GOP has repeatedly threatened to walk away unless the pipeline is attached. Now, the legislation is all but dead, an industry source told The Hill:

“I think the bill’s dead,” a transportation industry source said to The Hill on Friday. “I don’t think they can fix what they have in front of them. Kicking it up to the leadership probably gives it a chance…but every time they get to the five-yard line, they move the goal posts back.”

Lawmakers have until June 30 to reach a deal on transportation spending before the current funding mechanism for road and transit projects runs out. [...]

Boxer said that the House lacked “urgency” and “leadership” in the highway negotiations. [House Transportation Committee Chairman John] Mica countered that the Senate “appears unwilling to compromise at all” on House provisions, like mandating the approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

This isn’t the first time House Republicans have jeopardized millions of transportation jobs by demanding approval of the pipeline. They threatened to walk away from negotiations early this month for that reason, and in March nearly caused a transportation shutdown before passing a short-term re-authorization. The implications aren’t small: 1.9 million workers will have to walk off the job without re-authorization of highway funds. Senate Democrats estimate that the long-term authorization package will create an additional one million jobs on top of that.

House Republicans have pitched the pipeline as a job creator, but the State Department estimates it will lead to only 6,000 temporary jobs — a far cry from the nearly three million created or saved by the long-term highway bill the GOP is blocking.

Despite last week’s disappointing jobs report, which showed the largest drop in construction jobs in two years, House Republicans are threatening to walk away from a transportation infrastructure bill unless Democrats agree to approve construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline and limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate coal ash:

House Republicans say they are willing to walk away from highway bill talks if they cannot get what they want on issues including approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and limiting the EPA regulation of coal ash, a move that clouds prospects for completing legislation before the June 30 deadline.

“If we can’t get serious about finding common ground, the bill will fail,” said Pennsylvania Republican Bill Shuster, a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee chairman and a deputy whip.

The Senate passed a bipartisan transportation bill by a 74-22 vote, but House Republicans have been unable to corral enough votes to pass their own legislation, instead opting for short-term extensions of transportation funding. And this is not the first time that House Republicans, led by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), have threatened to use the bill to force approval of the pipeline.

Back in March, Republicans threatened to shut down transportation funding, which would have meant at least the temporary loss of 1.9 million jobs. Meanwhile, the GOP claim that the pipeline is a key driver of job creation is largely a myth.

In late 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) scuttled a proposed tunnel beneath the Hudson River, saying that the desperately needed infrastructure project would be too expensive for New Jersey. “It’s a dollars and cents issue,” Christie said at the time, claiming that New Jersey would have to pay a disproportionate amount of the project’s costs.

However, a new report from the Government Accountability Office shows that Christie vastly exaggerated how much of the project would be paid for by New Jersey:

The report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released this week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.

Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey’s share of the costs: he said the state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had made several offers to share those costs.

After canceling the project, Christie steered money earmarked for the tunnel into the Garden State’s transportation trust fund, rather than fixing the fund’s obviously broken revenue stream (which might have included raising the gasoline tax). “[The tunnel] was critical to the future of New Jersey’s economy and it took years to plan, but Gov. Christie wiped it out with a campaign of public deception,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in a statement. “The future of New Jersey’s commuters was sacrificed for the short term political needs of the Governor.”

At the moment, both Amtrak and New Jersey transit trains share a pair of 100 year old tracks under the Hudson River, which are operating at capacity. Demand for mass transit between New York and New Jersey is expected to increase by nearly 40 percent by 2030. But instead of financing this important project, Christie used it for his political advantage, and then turned around to throw money at a boondoggle of a mall project.

According to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, the last few years have seen the first drop in miles driven annually by Americans since World War II, in large part thanks to a reduction in driving by young people:

From World War II until just a few years ago, the number of miles driven annually on America’s roads steadily increased. Then, at the turn of the century, something changed: Americans began driving less. By 2011, the average American was driving 6 percent fewer miles per year than in 2004.

The trend away from driving has been led by young people. From 2001 to 2009, the average annual number of vehicle miles traveled by young people (16 to 34-year-olds) decreased from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita — a drop of 23 percent.

“America’s transportation preferences appear to be changing. Our elected officials need to make transportation decisions based on the real needs of Americans in the 21st century,” said Phineas Baxandall, Senior Transportation Analyst for U.S.PIRG Education Fund. However, it’s quite clear that House Republicans in Congress aren’t quite caught up to speed.

The House GOP has been squabbling for months over a bill to reauthorize the nation’s transportation funding, with more conservative members of the caucus wanting to gut funding and send it back to the states to deal with. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), in the transportation bill that he proposed, called for ending the government’s dedicated stream of funding for mass transit, and instead implementing a cockamamie scheme that the Congressional Budget Office said would cover just five percent of mass transit needs.

The New York Times called the GOP’s plan “uniquely terrible,” and as the research organization PolicyLink found, it would have a disproportionately negative impact on minorities, who depend upon mass transit in greater numbers. The Senate, meanwhile, has had none of these problems, passing a bipartisan transportation bill that the House GOP refuses to take up.

When Congress was fighting over disaster relief funding in 2011, House Republicans passed a watered down funding bill and warned Senate Democrats not to block it. “Time for the Senate to do it’s [sic] job, stop threatening shutdown, stop playing politics, fund FEMA, and pass the CR,” Brad Dayspring, then a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), tweeted. There was only one catch: the Senate had already passed a bill funding disaster relief.

House Republicans are attempting a similar strategy now, just two days before the government’s spending authority for transportation expires. The Senate passed a bipartisan transportation bill last week, while House Republican leadership has struggled to get its conservative flank on board with any of its proposals.

Democrats have indeed blocked versions of the House’s disastrous transportation bill in an effort to get the bipartisan Senate bill, which garnered 22 Republican votes, passed through the House. But Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has ignored the Senate bill and has been unable to line up Republicans behind any of his proposals. Now, his spokesperson is attempting to blame Democrats for the GOP leadership’s inability to pass an extension, The Hill reports:

A spokesman for Boehner said Wednesday that the GOP had only moved to consideration of a 60-day extension because Democrats had said they would support it. The spokesman, Michael Steel, said that the fate of the extension of transportation funding is now “up to Democratic leadership.”

“It’s their choice as to whether to work in a bipartisan fashion or play political games with our country’s economy,” Steel said in a statement.

At least one Republican recognizes how ridiculous the GOP’s attempts to blame Democrats are. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) told reporters Wednesday that the GOP’s strategy was to “pray the Senate doesn’t call our bluff.”

The Senate’s two-year package would save an estimated 1.9 million jobs and create as many as 1 million more, according to the bill’s bipartisan sponsors. In the event of a shutdown, the Highway Trust Fund, which funds infrastructure projects, would lose $110 million a day in gas tax revenues, and states would be forced to delay entire transportation projects. Instead of passing that bill, though, House Republicans are planning to pass a short-term extension before skipping town for recess, leaving the Senate to clean up their mess.