Jim McTague of Barron’s devotes his latest “D.C. Current” column to the likelihood of federal legislation in the next couple of years targeting infrastructure repairs.

The Republican-controlled Congress is likely to team up with Democrats before the end of 2016 to pass a big, four-year surface-transportation bill similar to the $302 billion measure sought by President Barack Obama is his fiscal 2015 budget. The idea is to replace aged highways, bridges, and tunnels across the U.S. The prospects for a bill are reasonably bright because, post-midterms, the GOP is in position to claim much of the credit. Our sources in the GOP leadership say there’s no question that legislation is required. A major hang-up is how to pay for it. …

… Despite both parties’ support for a bill, the road to final passage will be as bumpy as the cobblestone alley in your local historic district. Funding disagreements will pit Republican against Republican and Democrat against Republican. The parties probably will have to agree on a corporate-tax reform bill before they can take up roadwork. This is the font from which the highway-repair money will most likely flow.

Obama would have Congress lower our domestic corporate-tax rate from 35% to 28% (25% for domestic manufacturers) and increase taxes on the overseas operations of U.S.-based multinational corporations. According to the Tax Foundation, businesses that take the foreign tax credit would experience a tax increase of $74.7 billion over 10 years. Obama also wants a one-time tax on the $2 trillion in overseas profits held or reinvested overseas to delay a tax hit when it is brought into the U.S.—a process called “repatriation.” That tax, which presumes repatriation even though the funds remain overseas, would bring in another $150 billion.

Here’s the rub: A hundred or so members of the conservative Republican Study Committee—18 of whom voted in the House leadership contest for anyone but Ohio’s John Boehner, who won—already have announced they will not countenance higher taxes or budget gimmicks to pay for infrastructure repairs. This group is not easily rolled. The RSC members favor cutting spending on other government programs and using that money to keep our bridges and roads from disintegrating.

This seems to foreshadow an impasse. However, I detect evidence of common ground in both the Senate and the House. Conservative firebrand Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky also wants to use tax revenues on corporate overseas profits to fund infrastructure projects. But Paul’s proposal eschews Obama’s tax-raising approach, which strikes Republicans as punitive. The senator would institute a 5% tax on repatriated profits to replace the current 35% rate (minus taxes paid to foreign countries), and use the money to refill the depleted Highway Trust Fund. There’s precedent for this, albeit a controversial one: In 2004, Congress passed a one-time 5.25% tax on repatriated funds. Some Democrats decried it as a tax giveaway.

“This would mean no new taxes but more revenue, and it is a solution that should win support from both political parties,” Paul said in July.