What’s the Word? WRDA!
“WRDA,” a legislative acronym pronounced “word-uh” in Beltway speak and not to be confused with Cameo’s 1986 hip-hop hit, “Word Up,” refers to the Water Resources Development Act, the authorization of water-related infrastructure projects, including dams, locks, and other navigational and flood control projects pertaining to the nation’s inland waterways. The last WRDA bill to be enacted into law was in 2007, over President George W. Bush’s veto.
To break the lengthy logjam, the House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee introduced H.R. 3080, the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2013 (or WRRDA). Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) marshaled the bill to final passage by the full House of Representatives on October 23, 2013, by an overwhelming margin of 417–3. Surprisingly, the traditionally pork-laden infrastructure legislation includes some modest efforts at reform, honoring the spirit of the purposefully added second “R” in the acronym, that represent respectable first steps toward a more fiscally responsible approach to infrastructure funding.
Conservative critics have taken issue with a number of the bill’s provisions amidst the usual skepticism associated with an ambitious big-dollar infrastructure bill that has traditionally been laden with projects parceled out to well-connected parochial interests around the country. However, from a price-tag perspective, the good in this bill need not be the enemy of the perfect.
For instance, all authorizations prior to the current bill amounted to about $60 billion. In their effort to take a first bite of the proverbial “elephant,” the House T&I members deauthorized $12 billion in projects that did not meet certain criteria, including whether a project was already under construction, had received funding in the last five years, or was authorized in the most recent (2007) bill. Budget hawks may justifiably take issue with the $8 billion in additional projects authorized by the 2013 bill, but the fact remains that if the unprecedented House approach holds, a net $2 billion will be saved in total authorizations (effectively reduced to $58 billion), a first in WRDA history.
In an additional effort to rein in runaway authorizations, the House bill places a cap on the cost and timeline of project studies, neither of which currently exists. Studies would be capped at $3 million and would have to be completed within three years.
Another reform includes a tweak to the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund (HMTF), replenished by user fees (ad valorem taxes on shippers) for the purpose of dredging ports and harbors to maintain navigability. Again, critics are correct to caution against an increase in discretionary spending that occurs under the House bill. But under the status quo, only about half of the HMTF is expended each year, even though the country’s current dredging needs far exceed the fund’s annual balance. Instead, much like the diversion of dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund to general government operations, the budget authority represented by the unspent HMTF dollars has been re-directed toward other government expenditures, not the purpose for which the fees were originally collected. Taxpayers should receive the benefits related to their tax assessments (in this case, more timely dredging) sooner rather than later. If the dredging is not a time-sensitive priority, then the tax rates charged to shippers should be lowered until a proper balance (between timing and funding) is reached. But these dollars should not be used in a cynical shell game to fund non-related activities; the House bill addresses that diversion.
The Senate took action on WRDA before the House and passed S. 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013, by a vote of 83-14 on May 15, 2013. Their approach would authorize virtually any project recommended for approval by the Army Corps of Engineers, creating a sticking point in relation to the House bill.
For example, S. 601 would virtually assure the construction of a potential boondoggle, the $10.3 billion Morganza-to-the-Gulf levee project. This “Landrieu Layaway,” a re-election priority of embattled Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.), would be an expensive sop to the 112,000 residents of Terrebonne Parish, whose leadership has collected $12 million in potential matching funds (or just about one tenth of one percent of the total project cost). Like many federal programs that are intended to mitigate against disaster and its aftermath, such a levee might have the unintended consequence of encouraging more development in an area that might not otherwise support such construction absent costly taxpayer subsidies.
The House-passed bill arrived in the upper chamber on October 28, and, on Halloween, the Senate passed the legislation after substituting its own version and requested a conference to resolve the differences. The conference met on November 20, with hopes of achieving consensus and passing a compromise ahead of the Christmas holiday, but that goal was not achieved. Conferees from both sides of Capitol Hill continue to negotiate, and it remains to be seen whether the House reforms will carry the day.