This Week in Congress

Posted on June 11, 2012October 17, 2012

Senate appropriators are scheduled to release their Labor-HHS-Education spending bill at a subcommittee markup Tuesday. This tends to be the most controversial appropriations measure each year and will likely receive a fair amount of Republican opposition given provisions that would fund key elements of the 2010 health care and financial regulatory overhauls. Action on the spending measure comes as lawmakers anticipate a Supreme Court ruling on the health care overhaul later this month. The House has not yet released its Labor-HHS-Education bill but has indicated they will do so by the end of June.

Meanwhile, there are two authorizing measures moving their way through the messy legislative process: Highways and Transit, and the Farm Bill. Congress has until the end of June to reauthorize the highway and transit bill or settle for another extension of current spending authority. If conferees don’t have the major elements of a deal put together when the House gets back from their recess next week, the odds are against getting a new surface transportation bill before the November election. The Office of Federal Relations continues to urge our delegation and the conferees to retain language in the bill to reauthorize the University Transportation Centers (UTCs) in their current configuration. UW operates the Region X UTC, which was re-launched last month as the PacTrans Center.

The Senate is expected to spend most of this week considering the five-year farm bill. In a policy statement released June 7, the Obama administration expressed disappointment that the $969 billion measure wouldn’t achieve the savings it seeks in crop insurance and the commodity program. The leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee have argued that reducing premium subsidies for crop insurance, something the president proposed in his 2013 budget request, might cause farmers to leave the program or reduce their level of coverage, which ultimately could cost the federal government in the event of a disaster. But critics of the program argue that the federal government is subsidizing private insurance companies and well-financed farm operations. Several research programs are also authorized in this bill, which could impact UW research efforts on biofuels, forestry, and resource management.

Today in Congress

Posted on June 7, 2012October 17, 2012

The Senate’s in at 9:30am and is expected to hold a key procedural vote on the farm bill at 10:30am. The House is in at 10:00am with first votes expected between 1:30—2:30pm and last votes expected between 10:00—11:00pm. The House is set to repeal parts of the health care act, including the medical device tax. It will also continue consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, and vote on a motion to instruct conferees on the highway bill. The House Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee marks up its FY2013 spending bill.

DOD Biofuels Efforts Threatened

Posted on May 18, 2012October 17, 2012

The House is also slated to vote on a defense authorization bill (HR 4310), which has a small provision with big implications for future transportation fuels. The Defense Department has been developing advanced biofuels for its ships and planes, helping make a market along with other federal agencies. The DOD’s goal is to curb dependence on oil products, provide reliable home-grown motor fuels with less wild price swings than oil, and perhaps ultimately deploy biofuel facilities that could shrink fuel tanker convoys that make inviting targets for adversaries. Commercial ship lines, railroads, airlines and other motor fuel users are watching, partly because biodiesel and jet fuel could help trim their emissions and partly in hopes of getting fuels with less volatile costs. House conservatives don’t like the DOD paying for alternative fuels when oil-derived fuels may be cheaper, and the authorizing bill would exempt the DOD from the alternatives program. That could cripple the effort since the DOD is the world’s largest buyer of oil fuels and its fleets are key to developing new-era fuel options.

Source: CQRollCall.com

Student Loan Interest Rates

Posted on May 8, 2012October 17, 2012

The Senate will take up a measure today that would prevent subsidized student loan interest rates from doubling this July. While both parties agree that they want to stop the rate hike from going forward, Senate republican leadership indicated Monday that they will likely filibuster the democratic measure because it opposes the proposed offset. Senate democrats need 60 votes to move forward with their bill. Democrats, who control 53 votes in the Senate, would need at least seven republicans to vote with them to overcome a filibuster and begin debate on the bill. House republicans have already passed a different version.

The democratic legislation would cover the $6 billion cost of preventing the interest rate increase by eliminating a corporate tax loophole that allows the wealthy to pay less in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Republicans prefer a measure similar to the House-passed bill, which would offset the cost of the interest rate cut by eliminating a fund in the 2010 health care overhaul that covers prevention and public health.

President Obama has made a campaign issue out of the bill because interest rates on Stafford loans will jump to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent if Congress doesn’t act by July 1^st.

UPDATE: The Senate just voted to blocked the bill to prevent doubling of the student loan rates. Stay tuned…

This Week in Congress

Posted on May 7, 2012October 17, 2012

Congress returns to work today after a week-long recess period. The Senate convenes at 2:00pm and continues debate of the student loan interest rate bill. The House is also in at 2:00pmwith votes expected around 6:30pm.

This afternoon, the House Budget Committee will mark up two bills: The Sequester Replacement Act of 2012 (HR 4966) and The Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act of 2012. Both measures aim to replace sequestration, the mandatory cuts scheduled to begin in January 2013. The first bill would stop sequestration from happening, while the second would outline a series of cuts to entitlement programs such as health care and food stamps that would replace the cuts to discretionary spending expected through sequestration. The full House is due to pass the package late in the week likely along partisan lines. However, the safe bet is Congress won’t reach agreement on how to deal with spending priorities until after the elections.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the Senate is scheduled to debate a bill to keep interest rates on federally subsidized student loans at 3.4 percent for one more year, instead of increasing to the previous amount of 6.8 percent. The House passed a similar bill a week ago, but the two chambers differ on how to pay for the extension. In a sign of their desire to downplay the partisan tensions, Senate Republicans are expected to help Democrats reach the 60 votes needed to overcome a procedural hurdle to bringing the measure to the floor.

Tuesday also marks the formal launch of a House-Senate conference to write a surface transportation reauthorization bill. If conferees can’t come to an agreement on the bill before the November election, then chances are good the bill just won’t get done this year. And that will mean starting over from scratch early in 2013. The biggest hurdles include the length of reauthorization, policy riders approving the Keystone XL pipeline and blocking EPA’s authority to regulate coal ash, and how best to pay for the cost of highway and transit programs around the country. This bill reauthorizes the University Transportation Centers; the UW operates one of these centers for USDOT Region 10.

Also this week, the full House is scheduled to debate the FY 2013 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, which includes funding for NOAA and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. House Rules Committee meets at 5:00pm today to write the spending bill’s rule, and it will hit the floor sometime later in the week. This will be the first FY 2013 appropriations bill to be approved in the House, but differences over spending levels make it likely that both chambers won’t agree on most or even all of its spending bills until after the elections. But by sending the measures through committee and to the floor in each chamber, leaders are at least offering a starting place for those year-end negotiations. Congress has missed the statutory September 30^th appropriations deadline for more than a decade, instead relying on continuing resolutions to keep the government from shutting down until the final bills are cleared and signed by the President.