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Congressional Focus
In This Issue...
• Congressional Focus: Sequestration hits, House and Senate pass differing Budgets and Congress sends another six-month government funding bill to the President...
• Municipal Bonds: A state and local groups’ report, a hearing in the House tax-writing committee and a bipartisan House resolution boost momentum for maintaining the exemption for municipal bonds...
• Dodd-Frank Implementation: The House Ag Committee approves the "Public Power Risk Management Act," designed to even the swaps playing field for municipal utilities...
• Clean Energy: Senators introduce bipartisan "Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act," Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) and others circulate a carbon price discussion draft and Sen. Shaheen (D-NH) testifies on energy efficiency...
• Cyber Security: Moving forward on the President’s Executive order on cyber, NIST announces a "framework" workshop...
• Personnel: Obama taps Gina McCarthy to head EPA, Ernest Moniz to lead the DOE; APPA’s Crisson announces his retirement...
Sequestration Hits Agencies
Federal agencies began to implement across-the-board sequestration cuts on March 1, after the Senate failed to pass two partisan measures to head off the cuts. With FY13 already well underway, $85 billion will be cut from discretionary spending. Unless Congress and the President reach agreement on an alternative, similar cuts will occur annually through 2021.
At the Department of Energy (DOE), the Science Office will see the biggest cut at $245 million, followed by the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office at $91 million. ARPA-E will lose $14 million. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Energy Information Administration will lose $15 million and $5 million, respectively, for the remainder of the fiscal year. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget will be cut by $52 million.
House, Senate Budget Committees Pass Respective FY14 Budget Resolutions
Both the House and Senate have passed budget resolutions, which direct each committee of jurisdiction to draft detailed proposals/legislation to meet those targets. The differing bills do not need to be reconciled and will not become binding law.
The Senate’s Budget, their first in four years, allowed Senators to debate several "hot-button" energy and environmental issues by offering and voting on non-binding amendments. Most failed, largely along party lines, including an amendment from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) that would have prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Dueling carbon fee amendments failed, including one from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that would have ensured that any carbon fee revenue is returned to taxpayers, and one from Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that opposed any fee or tax on carbon emissions that would have passed but was blocked on procedural grounds.
The Senate Budget does not reference municipal bonds specifically, but encourages the Finance Committee to focus on "inefficient tax expenditures" and those that "disproportionally benefit the wealthiest Americans," claims some have made against municipal bonds. It also suggests the Bowles-Simpson proposal, which advocated eliminating municipal bonds, could be an option to reform the tax code. The issue will now be decided by the Finance Committee.
Congress Clears CR for President’s Signature, Advance Budget Resolutions
On March 21, the House accepted the Senate version of a six-month funding bill to keep the government operating through Sept. 30 and avert a shutdown. The bill provides full funding for Defense, Veterans and some other agencies—but does not undo the overall sequestration funding levels.
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