President Obama appealed to lawmakers on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue to hit the ground running when they return to session next week.
During a set of brief remarks in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday morning, the president stated that the top priority for Congress must be reauthorizing a surface transportation bill that is set to expire on September 30.
Doing so, he said, would “give workers on communities across America the confidence that vital construction projects won’t come to a halt.”
Obama summoned his Transportation Secretary, as well as top executives from the nation’s largest business and labor organizations to stand with him at the podium in an effort to portray common interest on renewing funding for the so-called “highway bill.” The White House estimates that congressional inaction could result in 4,000 workers being furloughed immediately, and may cost possibly one million jobs over the course of a year. Moreover, the administration wants desparately to prevent the expiration or suspension of a 18.4% federal gas tax that is included in the bill. The tax helps fund state and local road projects, and is valued at $100 million annually.
Obama said that with interest rates at an all-time low and millions of Americans in need of work, the time is right to send a jolt through the transportation and construction sectors.
The president also reminded lawmakers that they have roughly two weeks to reach a deal on funding for the Federal Aviation Administration. Congress passed a short-term funding extension at the beginning of this month after a nearly two-week impasse which put 74,000 workers on temporary furlough and cost the Treasury Department $390 million in lost revenue that occurred through not being able to collect fees on airlines. However, that measure expires on September 16, at which point FAA employees could be facing a repeat scenario.
Then there’s the question of FEMA funding. The emergency management agency admitted on Tuesday that it could find itself $5 billion in the hole as a result of having to respond to the damage caused by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene, which pounded the East Coast this past weekend. Currently, the agency, which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, has about $800 million on hand. FEMA has announced plans to temporarily postpone long-term recovery projects in other areas of the country so that it can focus now on helping residents in states such as Vermont, North Carolina and Virginia that bore the brunt of the storm. However, it remains unclear whether lawmakers in those states will swiftly seek supplemental funding, which is not subject to congressional pay-as-you-go rules, or whether Congress will quickly pass a 2012 DHS funding measure that FEMA can immediately begin to dip into.
Next month will also feature the official start of negotiations between lawmakers on the new joint committee on deficit reduction. The bipartisan, bicameral panel of twelve will have until Thanksgiving to come up with a proposal to cut the national debt by $1.5 trillion. Failure to meet that criteria and have a bill voted on by Christmas would trigger an automatic series of cuts to both domestic and defense spending equal to the $1.5 trillion total.
White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Wednesday that President Obama will present a detailed debt reduction plan of his own to the committee sometime in September.
This story was updated at 1:30 pm