Washington Update: June 11, 2008
Find the latest legislative news updates from Washington, D.C., that impact Resort and RLI.
In This Issue
1031 Provision Deleted From Farm Bill, Conservation Incentives Left In
Nevada Rancher Wins Award Over Seized Water Rights
H-2B Visa Provision Withdrawn from Defense Supplemental
Controversial Wetlands Legislation Stalls In Both House and Senate
Senate Votes to Reauthorize Flood Insurance Program
NAR Introduces the Small Business Health Options Program
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1031 Provision Deleted From Farm Bill, Conservation Incentives Left In
The House and Senate last week voted to overturn the president's veto of the farm bill, making all but one of the bill's titles law and bucking the White House with emphatic support for the $286 billion measure. The strong vote of support came despite complaints from some Republicans that the action could violate the Constitution and invite legal challenges against the bill, since one section was missing in the paperwork.
"I want to make sure there's no doubt in anyone's mind," Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said on the floor at the conclusion of the vote. "Fourteen of the 15 titles in this farm bill are now law."
Last week, lawmakers discovered a clerical error in the version of the bill they sent President Bush. The parchment-printed copy Bush vetoed contained 14 of the 15 titles of the farm bill. The 34 pages of the trade title -- which includes international food aid and a certification program for softwood lumber -- were missing. Due to the error, the vote is not quite the end of lawmakers' work on the farm bill. Lawmakers will either have to take up the trade title on its own or vote again on the entire farm bill when they return from the Memorial Day recess.
"We're not sure where we'll be when we get back; there is a chance we will have to take up the bill again," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.). "But we hope over the next few days we can smooth this over."
As committee aides and lawyers scrambled to understand how best to deal with the missing title, Democrats tried to hedge their bets for passage of the farm bill. Lawmakers have been working to reauthorize the massive measure for the past two years. With the most recent extension of farm programs expiring last week, senators moved to override the veto for as much of the farm bill as they could. Meanwhile, the House voted to pass all 15 titles of the farm bill.
The Senate could take up that bill and go through the veto and override process again, or the two chambers can try to pass the trade title separately.
Despite the dispute over the missing title, both the House and Senate votes were well above the two-thirds margin needed to overturn a veto. It is the second time lawmakers have been able to outweigh Bush in the past eight years. The only other override came for the Water Resources Development Act last year.
Like WRDA, which oversees funding for various water projects, the farm bill had a variety of programs for lawmakers to support. The $286 billion five-year farm bill would ramp up funding for some conservation programs and food stamps and extend most crop support programs.
Democratic lawmakers said the decision to move forward on the veto-override came after extensive consultation with parliamentarians. They decided they could enact the abbreviated bill and pass the missing trade title later. House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) cited an 1892 court case that he said formed a legal precedent for the move.
"It is totally constitutional to do what we're planning to do, so no one should be concerned about that," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said before the Senate vote.
Nevada Rancher Wins Award Over Seized Rights
A federal judge awarded more than $4.2 million to the estate of a Nevada rancher, ruling the U.S. Forest Service improperly seized his water rights during a longstanding dispute over livestock grazing on federal land.
U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Loren A. Smith ruled that the Forest Service did have the right to revoke the late rancher Wayne Hage's grazing permit -- the service did so because it claimed Hage was overgrazing -- and that it illegally took his water rights when it blocked him from maintaining the ditches he used to irrigate his property.
The government restrictions on ditches -- Hage was only allowed to use hand tools for their maintenance -- reduced water flows to Hage's land and "deprived them of the water they needed for irrigation, making the ranch unviable," the judge ruled.
The ditches irrigated a 7,000-acre ranch in central Nevada and 700,000 acres of national forest land where Hage grazed his cattle -- an area two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. Hage claimed allowing the Forest Service to deprive his water rights could cause widespread erosion of private property protections.
The Forest Service has not yet decided whether it will appeal the decision, Ed Monnig, supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said yesterday. The settlement payment, which Hage's lawyer estimates will include an additional $4.4 million in interest, would be the largest ever in such a case.
H-2B Visa Provision Withdrawn from Defense Supplemental
The H-2B language that passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week was stripped out of the Iraq war supplemental that passed the Senate on May 22. This bill passed the House on May 21. The amendment, co-sponsored by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), would have provided a three year extension of an H-2B returning worker provision originally part of Senator Mikulski’s Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act. The provision, which expired on September 30, 2007, exempts returning workers who have played by the rules from counting against the 66,000 cap on visas. NAR sent a letter to Senators Gregg and Mikulski supporting this provision after the NAR BOD passed the policy supporting this kind of legislation.
Unfortunately, not all of the provisions of the Mikulski bill were included in the amendment in an effort to avoid procedural concerns with the Senate's rules. As a result, Senator Sanders (I-VT) raised objections to including the reauthorization when he determined that the worker protection provisions that he had negotiated with Senator Mikulski were not included. Mr. Sanders has had concerns with the H2B program for some years ever since it was reported that Killington resorts had hired a large number of H-2B workers and local Vermont kids were not able to get jobs. Also complicating the discussions was the fact that the seasonal agricultural jobs issue was also left unaddressed. As has been reported before, this issue has been wrapped up and held hostage by a number of unrelated immigration/visa related issues, and this was another example of that dynamic.
In other activity, on Tuesday May 6, the House Education & Labor Committee held a full committee hearing on the H-2A & H-2B visa programs for temporary workers to discuss whether these programs effectively ensure that local workers are hired first. Resort communities that have seasonal spikes in demand for workers have come in recent years to use the H-2B visas as a means of filling seasonal jobs. Witnesses from the Dept. of Labor, small businesses, labor and immigrant advocates discussed many of the benefits and pitfalls of these programs. While the hearing focused on the agriculture industry, there was a brief discussion of the hospitality industry and the bona fide need that resort communities such as Cape Cod have for seasonal labor. There was no specific mention of reauthorizing the program.
In an effort to join with like-minded organizations and interests on the H-2B visa issue, NAR recently joined the H2B Workforce Coalition, an advocacy group who goal is to promote a stable and reliable seasonal workforce for the benefit of business and the American economy. The immediate goal of the coalition is to pass H.R. 1843, the Save or Small and Seasonal Business Act.
Controversial Wetlands Legislation Stalls In Both House and Senate
The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) held a hearing this Spring on H.R. 2421, the Clean Water Restoration Act. The bill is sponsored by T&I Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.), who is seeking to overturn two recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding jurisdiction over wetlands. The bill seeks to broaden the scope of federal jurisdiction over waters by removing the term "navigable" and replacing it with the term "waters of the United States," a term that opponents of the legislation say would dramatically increase federal jurisdiction.
NAR strongly opposes this legislation and is working with the Waters Advocacy Coalition to kill the bill. The April 16 hearing featured 23 witnesses on five panels including a witness representing the Waters Advocacy Coalition (WAC).
The hearing was expected to be a prelude to a mark-up the following week. However, due to the fact that several members of his own party expressed deep concerns and reservations with the bill, Oberstar has not scheduled a mark-up to pass the legislation out of his committee. This is due in part to the activities of the WAC, who has worked for the past year to contact key members of Congress and staff to educate them regarding the true implications of this legislation.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a similar (though shorter) hearing on a similar bill, S. 1870, sponsored by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).
Senate Votes to Reauthorize Flood Insurance Program
The Senate passed a measure in May to overhaul the National Flood Insurance Program and reauthorize it for five years. The measure (HR 3121), which passed by a vote of 92-6, would forgive a $17.5 billion debt to the Treasury that the program incurred after the 2005 hurricane season. The legislation now goes to a conference committee to iron out the significant differences between the two bills.
“It is a strong, bipartisan bill that enhances the long-term viability of the National Flood Insurance Program, helping to provide critical insurance coverage for millions of homes and businesses throughout the country,” said Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.
Dodd has called the debt-forgiveness provision a critical element toward putting the program back on sound financial footing. But the provision is likely to cause problems under Democratic pay-as-you-go budget rules. The House-passed version of the bill would not forgive the debt.
Before passing the bill, senators amended it with the text of legislation (S 2284) that had served as their vehicle for floor debate.
Lawmakers want to complete work on the bill before hurricane season this year, which officially begins June 1. After the catastrophic Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005, the program was overwhelmed with claims that far outstripped its premium income. The program’s authorization (PL 90-448) expires at the end of 2008. The new bill would last through 2013.
The legislation includes a new requirement that residents in areas behind levees and dams buy flood insurance. Premiums would be phased in over two years. The Senate last week defeated, 30-62, an effort by Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., to strike that requirement from the bill, in favor of language that would require a study to assess the risk for properties protected by such structures.
The bill also would update the nation’s flood maps through the establishment of a 13-member Technical Mapping Advisory Council and by authorizing $2 billion. It would remove the limitation on state contributions for updating flood maps. Realtors were identified as a sector that should be represented on this Council.
The legislation would phase out subsidized rates on vacation homes and allow premiums to increase by as much as 15 percent per year, up from 10 percent.
The measure passed Tuesday also includes language from a bill approved separately by the Senate Banking Committee (S 2286) that would require a study on the federal role in providing broader catastrophic insurance.
The bill, unlike the House-passed version, would not expand the program to cover damage caused by wind. Gulf Coast lawmakers consider this controversial provision the most important aspect of improving the national program, but critics say such a move would interfere with private markets and increase the government’s liability exposure. The Senate last week rejected, 19-74, an amendment by Roger Wicker, R-Miss., that sought to add wind coverage to its bill.
Dodd agreed to add a provision sponsored by Landrieu that would boost oversight of insurance companies as they determine whether storm damage is caused by privately covered wind damage or federally covered water damage.
But Landrieu still voted against the legislation, along with Louisiana Republican David Vitter and Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla., Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark.
“Americans should have access to affordable insurance in order to protect themselves and their businesses from the danger and destruction of floods,” Dodd said Tuesday. He added that he and Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, ranking Republican on the Banking committee, had “designed this legislation to make flood insurance available to the people who need it, while protecting the taxpayers who guarantee it.”
NAR Joins Senators to Introduce the Small Business Health Options Program
On June 10, 2008, NAR Treasurer Jim Helsel represented the National Association of Realtors® at a bipartisan press conference introducing H.R. 6210, the Small Business Health Options Program Act (SHOP).
H.R. 6210 is a House companion measure to the earlier introduced Senate small business health measure,S. 2795. The bill was introduced and cosponsored by Representatives Kind (D-WI), English (R-PA), Barrow (D-GA), Young (R-FL), Allen ( D-ME), Ramstad (R-MN), Altmire (D-PA), Gerlach (R-PA), Courtney (D-CT), Shays (R-CT), Carnahan (D-MO), AND Emerson (R-MO).
As proposed, the SHOP concept would offer tax incentives to encourage states to reform small group insurance markets and to make health insurance premiums more affordable for small businesses and the self-employed. It would also develop a nationwide insurance small-business purchasing pool that would still be subject to state insurance regulation to protect those who choose to participate.
In announcing its support for the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), NAR reiterated the importance of reforming the U.S. health care market for small businesses and independent contractors. In a recently conducted 2008 NAR Health Insurance Coverage survey, 82 percent of Realtors® believed the current health care system is not meeting the needs of most Americans, and nine out of 10 Realtors® thought that the U.S. health care system should be reformed. Nearly a quarter of NAR's 1.2 million members do not have health care insurance, and for most Realtors® without insurance, the reason is cost. NAR continues to meet with both Senate and House offices seeking additional cosponsors.
