Progressives failed 198-225 to advance a motion offered by Rep. Davis (D-Tenn.) to recommit (send back) the highway funding bill (HR 3550) bill to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee with instructions to increase funding for the bill to the Senate-passed level of $318 billion. No Republicans voted in favor of the Davis motion. Progressives argued that, as written the transportation bill has "a number of genuine shortcomings," including a failure, they said, to provide an adequate level of funding to meet the needs of our states' transportation infrastructure. The Senate approved highway legislation providing $318 billion over six years, while the House took up a $275 billion measure. Progressives made the case that the highway bill was also a jobs bill, citing estimates that every $1 billion invested in federal highway and transit creates 47,500 jobs. They proposed paying for this federal expenditure by raising government revenues elsewhere - mainly via cracking down on "abusive tax shelters" that enable American companies from avoiding paying U.S. taxes by moving to a foreign country, progressives said. Conservatives, led in the debate by House Transportation Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) said the $318 billion figure advanced by the Senate is "very frankly ...not true. What we have to do is try to find the real dollars, and we are going to attempt to do that in conference," Young said. Conservatives also charged progressives with linking the bill to the tax issue as a way to try and score "political points."