Two steps forward, one step back. For Congress, that’s progress.
Two long-awaited bills are expected to be approved in both House and Senate, possibly as early as today or Friday, after legislation for both moved out of conference committees earlier this week.
You can even count one bill as a two-fer. The federal transportation bill, called the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, is a five-year $281 billion spending bill that will make desperately needed investments in the country’s transportation infrastructure. The state’s congressional delegation helped secure spending that benefits Washington state, including $400 million for the Federal Highway Administration’s ferry program, ensuring more funding for Washington State Ferries and overall funding for bridge and highway work and transit programs in the state.
Just as important, the bill also renews the Export-Import Bank, the federal agency that guarantees loans between American manufacturers and foreign buyers, promoting the exports from large and small companies. The banks authorization expired earlier this summer, forcing lost opportunities for trade.
Congress also is expected to approve reforms of No Child Left Behind, following a bipartisan effort in April by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee. A spokeswoman for Murray’s office said this week that while the bill has changed some in conference, the Senate version that Murray and Alexander worked out is largely intact.
Among its provisions, the Every Student Succeeds Act reduces the more burdensome requirements of NCLB, reducing reliance on high-stakes testing and expanding access to quality education for all students. Importantly for Washington state, it ends the state waiver process that in 2014 labeled 88 percent of schools in the state as failing. Instead, states will have the flexibility to design their own accountability systems. The bill would also de-emphasize the use of student test scores as one of the only indicators of school success, leaving the assessments to be used for evaluating student performance and as a tool for directing their education.
But where bipartisanship has resulted in sorely needed reforms and renewals in the areas listed above, Congress is reverting to past practices in its attempts to pass an omnibus spending package for 2016 as it deadline approaches Dec. 11.
Congress averted a government shutdown in late-September when then-Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he was stepping down, leading to a temporary budget extension that expires next Friday. A full budget agreement was stymied in September when House Republicans attached a long list of policy riders, most of them wholly unrelated to the budget, that were unacceptable to many Democrats and President Obama. Among them, was the effort to defund Planned Parenthood.
The proposal to defund Planned Parenthood and other such riders have returned with the Republicans’ latest spending plan, this time with the approval of new House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin. Some of the riders now attached to the budget would block action on environmental, labor and financial accountability issues that only a minority hope to block.
Democrats and Republicans in both House and Senate have shown with their deals on transportation, the Export-Import Bank and reforms to No Child Left Behind, that they can reach agreement. Further brinkmanship on the budget is tiresome and only risks harm to the nation’s economy.
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