By JM Rieger and Niels Lesniewski

Reacting to an international tax-code overhaul proposed earlier Wednesday by Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Rob Portman, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is “skeptical” of using part of an overhaul to pay for a long-term highway bill while emphasizing there would not be a gas tax increase. “The best way to deal with the tax code in my view is comprehensive, an entire scrub — that’s what [Ronald] Reagan and Tip O’Neill did on a bipartisan basis some 30 years ago,” McConnell said. “We obviously can’t do that in two weeks, and even some component, some subset of that, that might be included in a larger comprehensive bill, is pretty hard to put together to meet the time constraints that we have on the highway bill.” With the Highway Trust Fund facing an end-of-month deadline to avoid insolvency, McConnell said the Senate would likely turn to consideration of a surface transportation bill next week.