Congress Works On Omnibus Spending Bill
By Eugene Mulero, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Nov. 17 print edition of Transport Topics.
House and Senate Appropriations funding leaders plan to unveil a fiscal 2015 omnibus spending bill soon — a measure backed by trucking leaders hoping to turn back a law regulating how long a driver can be behind the wheel.
The omnibus bill would be designed to keep the federal government funded through Sept. 30.
Trucking executives support the move because an omnibus would be an ideal legislative vehicle for advancing a proposal that would suspend for a year the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s hours-of-service rule that requires drivers to take off two consecutive periods of 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. during a 34-hour restart.
The proposal to suspend the HOS rule was introduced by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and a Senate committee attached it to a fiscal 2015 transportation funding bill.
That transportation funding bill could be included in an omnibus package, sources say.
Republican leaders are arguing in favor of an omnibus, as a way to clear the legislative slate for the GOP majorities in both chambers to start fresh with fiscal 2016 measures.
“I think we need to get old business behind us and start off with a clean slate in January,” Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters.
But a group of tea party conservatives in the House and Senate have come out against the omnibus, opting for replacing the continuing resolution, or CR, with a new one.
They argue that spending bills for fiscal 2015 should be written not by a lame-duck Congress but by House Republicans next year after a new, approximately three-month-long continuing resolution is signed by President Obama.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me to say, ‘Let’s negotiate before we have a better position,’ ” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), told reporters. In the Senate, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas has indicated a CR should be Congress’ priority in the lame-duck session.
Tea party-backed members and other Republicans also oppose including legislative language related to immigration reform in the omnibus bill.
Republican Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona has collected the signatures of more than 50 colleagues asking Rogers and the Republican leadership to include a provision in the omnibus that would block an executive order on immigration by Obama.
Current funding for federal agencies expires Dec. 11, under a continuing resolution that Congress passed before the midterm elections. Since leaders from both parties say they reject shutting down the federal government, lawmakers can either pass another temporary continuing funding resolution or a fiscal 2015 omnibus bill during this current lame-duck session.
The omnibus would consist of the appropriations bills that provide funding for the federal agencies, such as the Department of Transportation. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is part of DOT, would be funded through an omnibus bill.
In a letter to members of Congress, American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves asked them to pass an omnibus in the lame-duck session.
“There is no good reason to avoid passage of an omnibus spending bill this year,” Graves wrote Nov. 6. “Passage of an omnibus appropriations bill this year will allow Congress to focus its time and energies on the critical domestic and foreign policy issues that will have to be addressed” in the next Congress that starts in January.
Graves also asked the federation’s members to urge their elected officials in Congress to sign off on the omnibus legislative package.
