By Nathan Hurst, CQ Staff

House Republicans opened talks with Democrats late Monday in an effort to reach agreement on a temporary extension of surface transportation programs.

The move came after GOP leaders found themselves without enough votes to pass a 90-day extension (HR 4239) that had been scheduled for a floor vote under expedited procedures requiring a two-thirds majority for passage.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, said Monday evening’s vote was postponed to facilitate negotiations. Late Monday, the majority leader’s office put out a schedule that included a placeholder to allow for consideration of the short-term extension bill or some version of it that would be considered under the expedited procedure if a deal is worked out.

Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., were in contact Monday through aides, a senior Senate Democratic aide said.

Reid remains firm that he is not “inclined” to take up the House’s sidelined, three-month extension of the transportation programs, the Democratic aide said, but has not ruled out that possibility. “We have not said what we would do with a 90-day extension,” the aide added.

The derailed House vote is the latest retreat by Republican leaders during a monthslong effort to renew federal highway and transit programs that will expire March 31 without action by Congress — a result that Democrats say could stall road construction projects at the start of the construction season, cost jobs and hurt the economy.

House Democrats had made clear Monday they would oppose the short-term extension, even as Republicans expressed confidence that their conference would support the bill. But without some 50 Democratic votes, the short-term measure was doomed to fall short of the two-thirds majority.

Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, the top-ranking Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was among those calling on fellow Democrats to oppose the short-term measure. He said the cancellation of the vote showed Republicans were prepared “yet again to kick their partisan pothole plan down the road.”

Echoing his party’s repeated calls for House Republicans to allow a vote on a House version (HR 14) of a Senate-passed, two-year, $109 billion surface transportation measure (S 1813), Rahall said earlier: “We could be working together to send a bipartisan bill to the president today.”

Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., also called for a vote on the Senate version, saying in his whip notice that the Senate-passed bill “will provide the kind of job creation that is needed as the economy continues its recovery and the construction season begins.”

Earlier this month, Boehner told Republicans that they would be voting on the Senate’s bill “or something like it” if they did not rally behind a modified version of the five-year, $260 billion measure (HR 7) introduced by Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John L. Mica.

Mica Bill Faced Stiff Opposition

The Florida Republican’s bill, the first House measure to win full committee approval since the 2005 highway law (PL 109-59) expired in September 2009, tied infrastructure spending to expanding domestic oil and gas drilling — a pairing endorsed by Boehner.