The Biden Administration is trying to block new infrastructure spending from funding new highways. Thanks to a Senate intervention, major upgrades could be coming to a highway near you—but only if enough lawmakers follow through.

The Administration’s plan to restrict new highways began after President Biden signed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021. Nineteen GOP Senators backed that spending blowout in hope of bringing home billions of dollars for state projects, specifically roads and bridges.

But a month later the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sent a memo to staffers urging them to deny competitive grants to projects that “add new general purpose travel lanes”—aka new roads. The guidance mimics restrictions that were offered by then-Rep. Peter DeFazio and expressly rejected by a House with a Democratic majority.

Senate Republicans challenged the FHWA memo, and last month the Government Accountability Office (GAO) agreed that the guidance was an executive-branch overreach. “We conclude the Memo is a rule,” the GAO said in a report, finding that the policy exceeded the FHWA’s mandate. Reclassifying the guidance as a formal rule means Congress will get a chance to revoke it under the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

The stakes are high because the FHWA will award billions of dollars in competitive grants over five years. State officials know that adding highway lanes is often the best way to reduce congestion and boost safety, but they’ll turn their attention elsewhere if the Biden Administration’s rule is left in place. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who oversees the FHWA, thinks highways are smog and climate-change generators, and he defended the restrictions in a Senate hearing last March.

But the push to nix the restrictions has begun. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, says she’ll challenge the anti-highway policy under the CRA this month. A simple majority of both houses of Congress could pass a “resolution of disapproval” and give President Biden the choice to accept or veto it.

The GOP-controlled House will likely vote for repeal, and the Senate will too if a handful of Democrats believe what they say. Three Senate Democrats wrote Mr. Buttigieg last year to question the highway policy.

“This guidance, although well intentioned, has generated a considerable amount of confusion,” said Sens. Joe Manchin, Jon Tester and Jeanne Shaheen. All three come from rural states that would be hurt by a federal bias against highway construction. We’ll see if the trio and other Democrats join Republicans’ push to repeal it.

President Biden will also go along if he believes his own infrastructure advertising. He sold the bill to the public with visions of gleaming bridges, tunnels and roads. Millions of commuters might be miffed to learn that new highway lanes aren’t the infrastructure that Democrats had in mind.