At midnight Wednesday, the federal transportation law funding national highway and transit programs expired. Amid a lack of consensus in Congress on what to do—as the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has been at odds with both the Senate and the Obama Administration—the current law was extended for one-month. However, it is a short-term fix.

Every six years the law authorizing national transportation policy and funding needs renewal. The current law expires Sept. 30 -- in nine days.

With Congress back after a summer recess, President Barack Obama, in an address before both the House and Senate on Wednesday, again made clear that the government’s business at this moment is health care reform. As a result, major climate legislation has been delayed twice in the Senate by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. At the same time, similar legislation in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee -- a $450 billion bill to overhaul transportation funding and policy nationally -- has not been put off, at least by Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D., Minn.).

Blueprint America correspondent Rick Karr in a web report from Alabama on the environmental impact of building highways, and the growth they can create.

In April, before the House transportation bill was introduced, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D., Minn.), Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, talked with Blueprint America about the legislation.

President Barack Obama has called for the creation of a National Infrastructure Bank. The intention: To create a structure so public works projects could be, according to the President while campaigning last year, “determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and our economy strong.” Still, it is unclear how a National Infrastructure Bank would function -- or even be established.

Blueprint America looks at the possibility of the Bank -- both the design and implementation of -- in interviews with Felix Rohatyn, author of Bold Endeavors: How our government built America, and why it must rebuild now, and Stan Hazelroth, Executive Director of the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank. Additionally, a breakdown of the progress of the National Infrastructure Bank so far.

Blueprint America: Public Works is an effort by 18 public television stations across the country that concentrates on the state of their local infrastructure. Communities -- big and small, urban and rural -- are, for the first time, collectively rethinking what it takes to make a place livable. PBS stations are producing radio and television segments, hosting discussions between policy makers and their communities, and offering further content online, all as a part of Blueprint America.

Blueprint America -- with American RadioWorks on public radio — looks at the new New Deal: President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure, but so did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

Blueprint America: Road to the Future goes to three very different American cities -- Denver, New York and Portland, and their surrounding suburbs -- to look at each as an example of the challenges and possibilities the country faces as citizens struggle to manage a growing America.