The Senate on Thursday put the finishing touches on a $12.3 billion water resources authorization bill – marking one of the few tangible things Congress has done so far this year to try to boost the economy and create jobs. We won’t know for some time, however, how much economic good it will do.
The Water Resources Reform and Development Act authorizes 34 water projects, ranging from the management of flood risks in Minnesota and North Dakota to environmental restoration in Louisiana to dredging the Boston Harbor.
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Congress committed $6.7 billion of a $10.3 billion hurricane protection project along Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, by far the largest investment authorized in the new legislation for waterways and navigation pathways. There are billions more in the bill for the Sabine Neches Waterway in Texas and Louisiana, Chesapeake Bay improvements in Maryland, and Everglades restoration in Florida.
The Senate voted 91 to 7 Thursday afternoon to approve the bill and send it to President Obama. On Tuesday, the House approved the massive public works legislation by a similar overwhelming vote of 412 to 4 after six months of tough negotiations between the House and Senate.
It’s worth noting that the bill merely authorizes new projects and keeps a few other old ones going. It will be up to the House and Senate Appropriations committees to decide how portions of the overall authorization will be divvied up each year. Moreover, while the bill provides reassurance to state governments, local communities and the construction and engineering industry that Congress is behind their most important waterway and environmental restoration projects, there’s no way of knowing for sure what the long-term economic benefits will be.
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Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the Senate Environment and Public Works committee chair, predicted the water legislation would “directly support approximately 500,000 jobs” and sustain the millions of jobs that depend on our water transportation system.
| 10 Largest Water Navigation and Restoration Projects (Cost includes federal and state funding) | |
|---|---|
| Louisiana – Morganza to the Gulf Hurricane Protection Project | $10.3 Billion |
| Maryland – Mid-Chesapeake Bay Island | $1.9 Billion |
| Minnesota-North Dakota – Fargo-Moorhead Metro Flood Management | $1.9 billion |
| Louisiana -- Coastal Area | $1.6 billion |
| Maryland -- Poplar Island Restoration | $1.23 Billion |
| Texas-Louisiana -- Sabine Neches Waterway | $1.1 Billion |
| Mississippi -- Coastal Improvement Project | $1 Billion |
| Georgia – Savanah Harbor Expansion | $706 million |
| California – Sutter Basin | $688.9 million |
| Florida -- Central and Southern Florida project/Everglades Restoration | $626 million |
| Source: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee | |
Proponents stress that the economic benefits will go well beyond creating construction jobs because the navigation and waterway projects will enhance this country’s competitive edge in international trade by improving and expanding U.S. ports. With the expansion of the 50-mile Panama Canal to be completed in 2015, the U.S.must prepare for larger ships passing through and making calls at U.S. ports.
However, Jimmy Christianson, director of government affairs for Associated General Contractors of America, said after the Senate vote, “It’s hard to calculate how many jobs this bill will exactly support.”
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“It’s easy to throw out large numbers [of jobs], but backing them up is always a different story,” he said in an interview. “I would say, though, that this legislation helps provide a lot of certainty to the markets. They know at least that there are projects out there.”
He added, “If you’re a construction company in the Louisiana area, you know you’re going to have a chance to do work” for a major project on the Gulf Coast. “It provides more certainty.”
The bill’s passage marked a rare display of unanimity on Capitol Hill. While election-year partisan gridlock has seemed to preclude action on immigration reform, the extension of long-term unemployment insurance or an increase in the minimum wage, there’s clearly bipartisan appetite for the approval of major public works, infrastructure and environmental restoration projects – especially in light of recent hurricanes, flooding and the recent brutal winter.
Congress still must deal with legislation to reauthorize spending for federal highway, bridge and mass transit projects before the Highway Trust Fund is exhausted this summer. The Obama administration said recently that failure to avert a bankruptcy of the trust fund could mean delaying about 112,000 roadway projects and 5,600 transit projects – and cost the economy as many as 700,000 construction jobs within the next year.
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In recent years, Congress has clamped down on old-fashioned pork-barrel spending on locks and dams, waterway improvements and flood control projects under the aegis of the Army Corp of Engineers, which supervises these federally funded improvements. However, leaders of the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction boasted that the projects included in the new Water Resources Reform and Development Act survived tough reviews. In the process, they jettisoned $18 billion worth of dormant projects that had been approved before 2007 but no longer measure up.
The bill’s authors – Boxer and House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) – contend that it does more to rein in spending than any previous water bill, while helping the economy and the environment.
“This is a great day for the United State Senate . . . for jobs, for business, for eco-system restoration, for our oceans,” Boxer said before the final vote. “It’s a great bill.”
“This legislation is about jobs and our country’s economic prosperity,” Shuster said earlier in unveiling the compromise package.
Some conservative and government oversight organizations have criticized the measure. They assert the bill doesn’t curb spending enough, according to the Associated Press. The bill represents “specifically the sort of parochial-based, politics-laced decision-making process that the current earmark moratorium was meant to guard taxpayers against,” Russ Vought, Heritage Action’s director of grass-roots outreach, wrote. And the seven votes against the bill came from Republicans, among them Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who said the bill is “full of unnecessary and unwanted projects.”
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