House Clears Tax Bill with Renewable Energy Incentives

The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee approved legislation last week that would extend more than three dozen expired and expiring temporary tax provisions for a year or more, including nearly $17 billion in incentives and credits for renewable energy.

The Energy and Tax Incentives Act of 2008 (H.R. 6049), approved by a 25-12 vote, although its future is murky.  The U.S. Senate Finance Committee will not mark up its two-year "extenders" bill (S. 2886) until it returns from the week-long Memorial Day recess.

The House legislation includes $16.9 billion in energy tax incentives and $27.1 billion to extend the roughly three dozen expired and expiring temporary tax provisions, including the research and development tax credit. Most of the extenders in the legislation are measures that expired at the end of December 2007, although there are a handful of provisions that are not set to expire until the end of December 2008.

The largest energy tax cut in the legislation is a long-term extension and modification of the renewable energy production tax credit, estimated to cost $7 billion over 10 years. The provision allows credits for the first time for facilities generating electricity from movements of waves and tides through 2011 and would extend the placed-in-service date for wind facilities for one year, through 2009.

Contact Deidra Ciriello.

Environment, Public Works Chair Releases Text of
New Climate Bill

U.S. Senate Environment and Public Work Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Wednesday released a substitute global warming bill that includes a number of significant changes compared to an earlier version approved in the Committee last December.

The new 157-page plan includes an $800 billion tax break to help Americans cope with high energy prices, greater use of international forestry programs, and a cost-containment program that creates a bank of extra greenhouse gas emission allowances to be auctioned off if the price for a carbon credit reaches a predetermined range.

Chairman Boxer insisted the changes would help win additional votes when the legislation comes to the floor for debate starting June 2. Senators Joe Lieberman (I/D-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.) co-authored the original bill and signed off on the substitute amendment. They promised to offer their own amendment that would expand the use of nuclear power. Click here for the amendment.

Contact Andy O'Hare, David Hubbard, or Jessica Hogle.

Agency Releases Report on the Environment

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this week re-released the final version of its 2008 Report on the Environment or ROE.  

EPA embarked on an initiative in 2001 to assemble the most reliable available indicators of national environmental and health conditions and trends that are important to the agency’s mission.   It initially presented the indicators in its Draft Report on the Environment released in 2003.  

Since then, EPA has revised, updated, and refined the ROE in response to scientific developments, as well as feedback from EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board and stakeholders. As a result, the EPA's 2008 Report on the Environment provides both an update and an improvement compared to the 2003 draft.

The goal of the ROE 2008 is to inform the public about trends in air, water, land, human health, and the environment that are of particular importance to EPA’s mission.  

The report is available at http://www.epa.gov/roe/.

Contact Andy O'Hare.

Senate Committee Considers Amendments to Key Labor Legislation

The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing Tuesday to discuss the FOREWARN Act of 2007 (S. 1792), introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio).   The legislation would amend portions of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act).

The measure would increase the amount of time an employer is required to give workers notification of a plant’s closing or relocation, or of a mass layoff. Currently, the law requires that businesses give a 60-day advance notice. S. 1792 would increase the time to 90 days.

Advanced notification of a mass layoff currently applies to businesses with five hundred workers. The bill would change the threshold to one hundred employees; advanced notice of a plant closing or relocation would apply to businesses with 25 employees rather than the current 50.

The FOREWARN Act would also provide the U.S. Department of Labor and states’ attorneys general the authority to investigate any violations of the notification requirements. Current law requires workers to file suit in a Federal court. Businesses found guilty of a notice violation, would also be required to pay workers double back pay for everyday of the violation up to 90 days.

Stefan Marculewicz, a labor attorney with the law firm of Miles & Stockbridge P.C. in Baltimore, testified before the committee, stating, “expansion of the WARN Act will place a significant hardship on small and mid-sized businesses that often do not have control over a decision to reduce their workforce or curtail their operations.” He further suggested that “small businesses are less likely to have available cash reserves or other resources to sustain a workforce, even for 60 days, when business conditions sour.”

Contact Robert Sullivan.

U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security, and Water Quality, and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) recently introduced the Safe Truck and Operations and Preservation (STOP) Act of 2008.

The STOP Act would lower the allowable length and weight limits for property-carrying vehicles traveling on federal-aid highways to 53 ft. and 80,000 lbs. The bill also freezes the less stringent grandfathered rights that some states are allowed.

Representative James McGovern (D-Mass.) introduced a similar bill in October 2007, titled the Safe Highways and Infrastructure Preservation Act (SHIPA), H.R. 3929.

Contact Robert Sullivan.

Questions about this newsletter? For more information or to unsubscribe, send an e-mail to info@cement.org