LEGISLATIVE
In Phase 4 bill, Congress has opportunity to stimulate economy with infrastructure spending for DOE facilities
ECA Staff | 5/1/2020
After passing multiple coronavirus relief bills in March ($2.5 trillion), Congressional leaders and the White House are proposing ideas for a potential Phase 4 bill. The discussions from the House include funding for infrastructure and local and state governments, while the Senate has focused on other issues.
Commentators have noted that as part of the infrastructure and jobs related measures in the next bill, Congress can use the opportunity to create jobs and promote science advancement through investment in U.S. Department of Energy facilities (including laboratories) and communities. For example, a one-time increase in funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and national laboratories would reignite the national economy, assist in reviving small businesses, and create thousands of new
jobs while at the same time reducing one of the federal government’s largest liabilities, accelerating the national defense mission, and building a nuclear workforce for the future.
In the federal government’s search for ways to stimulate the economy from the impacts of COVID-19, Congress will likely look back to DOE’s successful management of increased funding and leveraging it for economic development as it has in the past. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) allowed DOE to speed up decontamination and demolition at numerous sites and award more contracts to private industry and small businesses to hasten the clean-up of legacy nuclear waste.
During ARRA, EM proved a worthy investment: the program received $6 billion and was able to reduce the program’s future financial liabilities by $13 billion through the acceleration of cleanup work. EM contractors hired over 20,000 new workers, putting them to back to work to reduce the overall cleanup complex footprint by 688 square miles.
The House announced it will not return to Washington next week, but House leaders are publicly calling for infrastructure to be a major component in the Phase 4 bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip James Clyburn, Rep. Peter DeFazio (Transportation and Infrastructure chairman), and Rep. Frank Pallone (Energy and Commerce chairman) recently held a press conference call to discuss a plan to spend $760 billion over 5 years on infrastructure.
After signing the CARES Act (Phase 3), President Trump also proposed a $2 trillion plan to invest in infrastructure in the next relief bill.
A Phase 4 bill that includes major infrastructure spending may face hurdles in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tempered expectations this week, commenting, “We have an equal interest in doing an infrastructure bill. We don't have an equal interest in borrowing money from future generations to pay for it. In other words, it's unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic.” Other Republicans such as Sen. Rob Portman and Sen. Dan Sullivan, however, expressed openness to including
infrastructure spending in the next relief bill as a means to stimulate the economy.
The process for Phase 4 will begin in May, as the Senate plans to return to Washington and House legislators and staff will continue to work remotely. The four major players in the upcoming negotiations—President Trump, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—are facing pressure from trade groups to provide additional relief for a wide array of industries, including retail, postal organizations, and oil and gas.
Over the next month of those negotiations, it is expected that infrastructure investments will be proposed either in the House’s Phase 4 bill or through the normal course of the appropriations process (which is expected to move through the House and Senate before the end of the summer).
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CONTRACTS
NUCLEAR SECURITY
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