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News and updates

The Aftermath…

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Both the House and Senate are in recess this week for the Fourth of July holiday.  Late last week, both chambers demonstrated that they can advance legislation by reauthorizing federal highway and transit programs for two years and preventing Stafford student loan interest rate increases.  Also last week, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Republicans vow to continue to cut or restrict funds to implement the Act, and Democrats encouraged states to move forward on implantation. While some features of the ACA have already been adopted – no denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and adult children can remain on their parents’ plans until the age of 26 – the main feature that mandates that all Americans must purchase some form of health coverage takes effect in 2014.

But the BIG news from last week is the major storm that hit the DC area late Friday night. Winds reached 80 MPH with intense thunder and lightning, leaving massive power outages and other storm damage throughout the region – mostly downed trees and power lines. Hundreds of traffic lights are still out and a half-million homes are still without power with outages expected to continue in some areas through the end of the week. This might not be so bad if the temperature wasn’t expected to be in the 90s all week!  Federal workers have the option to take unscheduled leave due to this mess, but if I were without power I would make my way into my air conditioned office post haste!

You’ll be happy to know that the dedicated Office of Federal Relations Team made it through the storm unscathed – all our homes had power over the weekend – and we all made our way into the office this morning. Happy Monday!

Student Loans and Transportation Research

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The House and Senate both will take action today on the conference agreement to HR 4348, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). The agreement reauthorizes federal highway, transit, and other surface transportation programs through September 30, 2014, at current funding levels with inflationary increases for certain programs. It consolidates or eliminates dozens of programs, and streamlines environmental reviews of proposed projects to more quickly begin construction. The measure also extends for an additional year the 3.4 percent interest rate for new federally subsidized student loans (Stafford Loans), and it overhauls the federal flood insurance program to help make it actuarially sound. To cover Highway Trust Fund shortfalls, the measure transfers $21.2 billion in general fund and other monies, and offsets the costs of those transfers through changes to pension law and other provisions. The measure does not include controversial House GOP-supported provisions that would have approved the Keystone XL pipeline, or shifted regulation of coal ash from EPA to the states.

MAP-21 includes language reauthorizing the University Transportation Centers (UTCs), which conduct transportation and transit related research as well as developing the future workforce in these fields.  UW operates the UTC for USDOT Region X.  We successfully retained language in the final bills to reauthorize Regional UTCs, which were under threat of elimination in earlier iterations of the bill. Specifically, HR 4348:

  • Authorizes 5 National Centers at $3 million each; 10 Regional Centers at $2.75 million each; and 20 Tier 1 Centers at $1.5 million each.
  • Requires Tier 1 Centers to have a 50 percent match and all other Centers a 100 percent match.
  • Requires one of the regional centers to focus on “comprehensive safety” as their main research issue.
  • Requires USDOT to establish a competitive recompletion for all Centers at the same time and no later than 1 year from enactment. 

The Office of Federal Relations is discouraged to see that everyone will need to re-complete within a year as they just went through this process last fall.  And, the overall authorization is only for two years, so all of this will come up again before we know it, and may require Centers to re-compete again.

Deal Reached on Student Loans

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On Tuesday, Senate leaders announced that they reached a deal to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, but they are still determining whether to attach that “deal” to a measure that would reauthorize highway programs, which is still being negotiated. Congress must take action on both issues – student loan interest rates and highway programs – before June 30th.

The agreement reached yesterday would use two pension-related maneuvers to offset the cost of the student loan bill, as well as a Republican proposal to reduce the amount of time that students are eligible for an in-school interest subsidy. The idea to change this eligibility had been included in the President’s FY 2013 budget request, with direction that the savings would be used to shore up a shortfall in Pell grants, a federal student aid program for low- to middle-income students.

The Office of Federal Relations is monitoring this closely as we are concerned that by taking this offset off the table, the Pell Grant program may experience a funding shortfall sooner than anticipated. It could also stymie Senate efforts to increase the annual Pell Grant award from $5,550 up to $5,635.

Congress Requests Information on Implementation of the Sequester

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Today, the House Budget Committee mark up Republican leaders’ legislation, similar to bipartisan language added last week to the Senate farm bill that seeks more information about the automatic budget cuts.  The action comes after several attempts by lawmakers to get more details from the administration about how the roughly $109 billion sequester will take effect in January.  The House bill (HR 5872) and its Senate companion measure (S 3228), introduced by Republican leaders in both chambers in May, would require the president to submit a detailed report on sequestration, identifying each account that would be affected and the amount by which it would be reduced.  As introduced, the report would be due on July 9th, which is several weeks earlier than deadlines set by the Senate in the farm bill.  Moreover, the Senate proposal is far more detailed, requiring a report from the president that would include a list of accounts that would be affected, an analysis of the impact of the cuts to key areas of government as well as the private sector within 60 days, and a Pentagon review by August 15th on the impacts of the cuts to national defense.

As you will recall, the across-the-board cuts, or sequester, was a consequence of the failed Joint Deficit Reduction Committee that was laid out in the Budget Control Act last August.  To date, there has been very little information released by the administration on how the sequester will be implemented.