With just over three months left to act, two key senators say movement on reauthorizing the nation’s surface transportation programs remains slow in their chamber, where four committees still have to weigh in.

In the House, a bill that was marked up last month by three committees still requires input from Ways and Means before it reaches the floor. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the bulk of the five-year reauthorization bill with a strong bipartisan vote, 62-2, although a rail safety amendment attached during the markup may become a point of contention further down the road.

One of the Senate committees with jurisdiction over the bill is Environment and Public Works, and Chairman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., in separate interviews Tuesday pointed to the multi-panel jurisdiction as a reason it is taking longer to write the Senate’s version.

“We’re negotiating, and we have three other committees that have to negotiate their portions,” Capito said.

She said EPW is “in heavy negotiation, working with our Democrat, and then our House counterparts.” But she also serves on another panel with jurisdiction — the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee — where she said “I don’t think we’ve started that yet.”

As for the overall process, she added, “It’s slow, and time’s a-ticking.”

Whitehouse commended Capito for the work being done in EPW but said he had seen “no signs of life out of” the other three Senate committees: Commerce, Finance and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

He also said he was waiting for Republican leaders to determine a topline amount for the Senate bill. The House bill would authorize roughly $580 billion for highway and rail programs through fiscal 2031.

“You want there to be a topline that all the committees have to come in under, and that topline has not been proposed yet by the Republican leadership,” he said. “So there are several steps that need to be taken by the majority in order to get that moving in three of the four committees and at the leadership level, and when they do, I think we’re ready to negotiate.”

As for what those negotiations will entail exactly, Whitehouse said it’s “hard to know” where the sticking points will be in the process.

“The original sticking point is, will the chairmen start negotiating? And do we know what the topline parameter is within which we’re negotiating?” he added, saying whether the bill gets over the finish line before the Sept. 30 deadline, when current authorization for the programs expires, is “entirely in the control of the majority.”

Asked whether she thought the bill would be done by the end of September, Capito said, “I think it can get done by then, but we’ll have alternatives if it doesn’t.”