Ryan lets House have at road bill
Members free to alter, add on
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that he would demonstrate his commitment to a more inclusive style of legislating by allowing unlimited amendments on an important highway bill that is being debated on the House floor this week.
In his first news conference as speaker, Ryan, addressing the complaints of some Republican hard- liners, pledged to take steps to empower individual lawmakers, and a more open amendment process has been among their demands.
“We came together as a conference and unified and agreed to proceed together with a vision,” Ryan, R- Wis., said at the news conference in the lobby of the Republican National Committee headquarters.
“This week, you will see the highway bill is a good place to start,” Ryan said. “We’re opening up the process. We’re allowing members to participate in a way that the founders intended. And we’re advancing an issue that is a big priority to the hardworking taxpayers
of this country, fixing our roads and our bridges, improving our transportation infrastructure.”
Lawmakers said they will watch closely, some warily, at how the floor action plays out toward a planned final vote Thursday and whether Ryan is living up to his promise to conservatives to give rank- and- file members more say. The House will consider dozens of amendments — far more than usual — possibly including some measures that would change how the U. S. Export- Import Bank operates.
Allowing floor votes on that many amendments is an important test for Ryan, said Rep. Jim Jordan, R- Ohio, leader of the hard- line Freedom Caucus that has demanded more power for rank- and- file lawmakers. “It will be a good sign,” Jordan said.
The highway bill, already passed by the Senate, includes reauthorization of the Export- Import Bank and would extend transportation programs for six years while paying for just three years. The House proposal would cost $ 339 billion. After the House passes its version, a House- Senate conference committee will try to agree on the first multiyear highway authorization law since 2012. Current funding ends Nov. 20.
Ryan’s legislative test will be to preside over a debate that is actually less a fight about transportation infrastructure than a battle over tax policy, which has been his main area of interest in Congress. Virtually everyone agrees on the need to maintain the nation’s roads, but there is fierce disagreement over how to come up with the money to pay for it.
The Highway Trust Fund is financed by a tax on gasoline, currently set at 18.4 cents per gallon. The tax, however, was never indexed for inflation, and that, combined with greater fuel economy of modern cars, has left the highway fund short of cash — by more than $ 53 billion since 2008.
Congress has made up the difference in recent years using general funds, but to make matters tougher, existing law calls for the gas tax to be cut next year to 4.3 cents per gallon. Ryan, who before becoming speaker was chairman of the tax- writing Ways and Means Committee, has long opposed any increase in the gas tax, a position shared by many of his fellow Republicans.
The stalemate over how to finance the trust fund led lawmakers to draw up a highway bill that includes six years of policy prescriptions — generally regarded as an optimum length of time for states to plan road work and other projects — but there is enough money to cover only three years’ worth of the measure.
That created a situation in which Ryan and Rep. Bill Shuster, R- Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, contradicted each other.
“This six- year bill creates more certainty for folks out there that are doing the work on our roads and infrastructure around the country,” Shuster said.
But when Ryan was pressed on the three years of financing, he said: “Well, it’s a three- year bill that has three years of financing. And if we can come up with more financing down the road, we can add more years to the bill.”
The House voted and debated on dozens of amendments Tuesday. Shuster said that some 280 amendments had already been filed, setting the stage for a lengthy floor debate that could last three days or more.
“I just want to thank the leadership team, especially Speaker Ryan, for opening up the process,” Shuster said. “There’s nothing more exciting than to be the first batter up in the batter’s box to face a new pitcher.”
Some of the amendments are set to be contentious.
“I hope a lot of the amendments don’t prevail,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D- Mass., said during a House Rules Committee meeting Monday night. He pointed to one in particular that he said would allow for bigger and heavier trucks.
The amendment, defeated Tuesday by a vote of 236- 187, would have allowed states to increase the maximum weight for trucks to 91,000 pounds from the current 80,000 pounds. It was supported by manufacturers, shippers and trucking companies who said it would make freight shipments more efficient and reduce the number of trucks on the road. Rep. Reid Ribble, R- Wis., lead sponsor of the amendment, has said trucks leave dairy farms and paper mills in his district half full because they’ve reached the maximum weight limit.
Arkansas’ four representatives, all Republicans, voted in favor of the amendment.
EXPORT- IMPORT BANK
Another challenge will be the proposals to revise the Export- Import Bank, which is backed by many House members but opposed by Ryan and other conservatives. Lawmakers are proposing more than 20 amendments to change how it operates, including one that would block big companies like Boeing Co. and General Electric Co. from benefiting from its financial backing for American exports.
Larger companies can get financing elsewhere, said Rep. Curt Clawson, R- Fla., who proposed the amendment. “Smaller companies, I believe, have more of a need for the Ex- Im bank. They can’t get the financing. They’re too small,” he said.
One of the bank’s chief backers, Rep. Stephen Fincher, R- Tenn., said Tuesday that he’s confident the bank supporters can defeat amendments to limit the scope of its lending or otherwise “derail” reauthorization.
“We will win in the end; it’s
just going to be a little more work,” said Fincher, who teamed up with Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland to force last week’s House vote for a reauthorization bill.
Other proposals would ban the bank from extending credit to companies in countries that don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and bar deals involving companies located in nations out of compliance with laws against human trafficking.
Rep. Ed Royce, R- Calif., chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, pitched an amendment that would prohibit the bank from dealing with nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism.
Ryan and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R- Texas, who both oppose the bank, describe it as corporate welfare that mainly benefits large companies that don’t need government assistance.
Export- Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg has rejected arguments by Republicans that the bank provides corporate welfare by financing foreign companies’ purchases of U. S. goods. The bank returned $ 675 million to the U. S. Treasury in 2014, Hochberg has said.
$ 5B COMPROMISE
Also on Tuesday, congressional negotiators struck a deal to strip $ 5 billion from the annual defense policy bill, bringing it in line with the newly passed budget and potentially ending a veto showdown with President Barack Obama.
The House is set to vote Thursday on the new proposal, and Republican leaders have put it on the suspension calendar, meaning it will require a two- thirds majority vote to pass.
House GOP leaders are taking this procedural step to show there are the votes to override a potential veto of the plan. Obama vetoed an earlier version of the bill because of a broader dispute over how much domestic and military funding should be increased.
But that fight was settled last week by the budget’s passage, paving the way for this new version of the defense authorization bill to be moved through Congress.
The need to find $ 5 billion in cuts is the result of a fight between the Republican- led Congress and Democrats over the use of a war account, the Overseas Contingency Operations fund, in the $ 612 billion defense authorization bill cleared by Congress earlier this year.
The White House argued that Republicans were trying to find a work- around to only alleviate pressure on defense spending by tapping the fund instead of lifting sequestration-era budget caps.
Lawmakers settled those concerns in a budget that Congress passed last week and the president signed Monday. Under that agreement, defense spending is constrained to about $ 607 billion — meaning leaders from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees had to come up with about $ 5 billion in cuts.
According to a document outlining the changes, the biggest cuts come from personnel spending at the Defense Department headquarters, civilian employment, Army and Air National Guard readiness programs, and the president’s counterterrorism partnership fund, which is used for operations in Africa and the Middle East.
Allowing floor votes on that many amendments is an important test for Ryan, said Rep. Jim Jordan, R- Ohio, leader of the hardline Freedom Caucus that has demanded more power for rank- andfile lawmakers. “It will be a good sign,” Jordan said.