The House passed the $21 billion Water Resources Development Act conference report last night, voting 381-40 to authorize more than 900 Army Corps of Engineers flood control and environmental restoration projects despite a veto threat from the White House.
The veto warning from the president did little to deter House members intent on passing the first WRDA bill since 2000. The ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), guaranteed a two-thirds House vote to override the veto if one is issued.
"I regret that we're in this situation," Mica said on the House floor yesterday evening. "But our job is to make certain that we build the infrastructure in this country and that we do it in a responsible manner.
"[Hurricane] Katrina should be a lesson to us all: either you pay now or you pay later," Mica added. "These are projects that will determine whether dams break, whether levees are secure, whether water resources for this nation are available and whether we do important environmental restoration that has been left behind."
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) reminded lawmakers that the cost of the conference report represents a backlog of seven years of project requests.
"Divide the cost by the number of years that have passed since we last passed this critical legislation, and the cost is understandable," Oberstar said.
Debate on the 828-page WRDA conference report was delayed late into the evening as Democrats and Republicans sparred over the $50 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
The bill now heads to the Senate for a vote, though a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said it was unclear when. "[I] have no idea," Jim Manley wrote in a late-night e-mail exchange. "Depends on what Republicans do."
The office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had not returned calls seeking comment at press time.
Lawmakers in both chambers yesterday vowed to override the surprise veto threat issued by the Bush administration just hours before the House started to debate WRDA. President Bush has used his veto pen just three times during his two terms -- twice on stem cell legislation and once on a war funding bill that included a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
In a letter sent yesterday to the House Transportation and Infrastructure and the Senate Environment and Public Works committees, Army Assistant Secretary John Paul Woodley said the WRDA price tag is too high to earn the president's support.
"It seems that a $14 billion Senate bill went into a conference with the House's $15 billion bill and somehow a bill emerged costing approximately $20 billion," Woodley wrote. "This is not how most Americans would expect their representatives in Washington to reach agreement, especially when it is their tax dollars that are being spent."
Senate Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and the committee's ranking member, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), both vowed to fight Bush to get the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto.
"This bill, while not perfect, has received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and goes a long way toward addressing our nation's water resource needs," Inhofe said. "I am not shy about voting for increased authorization and spending on national defense needs or public infrastructure."
The president found an unlikely ally in Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who withdrew his support for the conference report because he says it weakens his Army Corps reform language.
"I welcome the administration's decision to veto this flawed version of the Water Resources Development Act," Feingold said yesterday. "The conference report significantly weakened those reforms and raised the price tag to $21 billion in pet projects."
The bill contains a compromise independent review provision that would trigger an outside evaluation of a project if its cost exceeds $45 million. While the Senate version of the bill included a peer-review requirement for projects that cost more than $40 million, the House review process would have applied to projects that cost more than $50 million. Reviews could also be requested by a governor or the corps in cases where a project is controversial.
Regardless of how many lawmakers support the bill, the president's veto promise could turn the public tide against the pork-laden bill, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
"Controversy creates scrutiny," Ellis said. "It is going to increase the attention to a $21 billion bill that typically doesn't get a lot of attention or scrutiny, and it probably can't stand up to it."
Ellis also said that WRDA has become something of a "legislative urban legend" where lawmakers feel they need the water projects to get re-elected.
"But the vast majority of the country doesn't really care about a water project and doesn't benefit much from WRDA," he said.
Much of the debate on the House floor last night was dominated by the reported collapse of a bridge in Minnesota. At press time, seven had been reported dead following a collapse that saw as many as 50 vehicles fall into the Mississippi River.
The Interstate 35W bridge, a major link between Minneapolis and St. Paul, broke into several sections at 6:05 p.m. central time yesterday. According to press reports, the bridge was under construction and was being repaired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation at the time of the collapse.
"Once again we are reminded of the importance of infrastructure, whether it's bridges, dams or highways, that depend on Congress to protect them," Mica said.
The conference report would provide $1.9 billion for Louisiana Coastal Area restoration and $2 billion for the Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway system. Some $1.6 billion would go toward ecosystem restoration work in the Upper Mississippi River Basin.
Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) said the money would go a long way toward weaning farmers off federal subsidies because it would boost their ability to transport crops to export markets via the Mississippi River. The bill authorizes long-delayed construction to build new locks on the upper Mississippi and Illinois rivers.
"If we fail to increase the size of our locks and if we were to allow river congestion to increase, farmers would lose $562 million a year," Hulsof said. "That income would need to be replaced by subsidy payments."
The $2 billion authorized in WRDA "is a hedge against the multiple billions of dollars against future farm subsidies and would allow farmers to farm for markets and not government checks," he added.
The Waterway Council estimates 3,000 to 6,000 jobs would be created to upgrade the locks.
WRDA also authorizes about $1.8 billion in Everglades projects, including the cleanups of the Indian River Lagoon and the Picayune Strand near Florida's southwest coast. The bill authorizes $81 million to build a 1,600-acre water storage reservoir for Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
More than $1.3 billion would go to the Indian River Lagoon project, to be split evenly between the state and the federal government. Restoration of the Picayune Strand ecosystem would get $375 million.
"Everglades restoration was talked about forever, even when I was back in the state Legislature in the 1970s," Mica said. "Tonight in this bill is the authorization for the first construction money to restore Florida's Everglades."
Since Congress authorized Florida Everglades restoration studies in 2000, project costs soared to nearly $11 billion -- a 30 percent increase from 2000 authorization levels. While the federal government promised to evenly split the cost of restoration with the state of Florida, the feds have been slow in paying their share (E&ENews PM, Sept. 25, 2006).
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