Myriad challenges are facing lawmakers staring down a March 14 deadline to raise the debt ceiling, while also delivering legislation that will support the Trump administration's call for new tax cuts and preserving ones already in place.
"We need to get this one big, beautiful bill passed and on President Trump's desk by the summer," said Rep. David Kustoff, R – Tenn. "We don't need to dance up to the December 31 deadline and have everyone guessing and have the markets freak out."
The comments came during a conference of the National Association of Counties on Tuesday.
The House and the Senate are wrestling with the notion of one bill that includes money for border security and a tax package versus splitting the issues in two and pushing off the tax debate until the end of the year when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is set to expire.
Kustoff is emerging as friend of the muni market by co-sponsoring a bill to restore the advance refunding of tax-exempt munis, which was nullified in 2017 by the TCJA.
"I think it's really important," he said. "I'm proud of it. The bill is bipartisan. We've got Republican co-sponsorship. We've got democratic co-sponsorship. And I'm also proud that it falls under the committee that I serve on the House Ways and Means Committee."
Ways and Means also has purview over the possible elimination of the tax-exempt status of munis and the future of the cap on the state and local tax deduction, which was also created by the TCJA. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates SALT is feeding $90 billion a year over a ten-year period into federal coffers.
"You've got some members of Congress who say, 'I want to lift the cap on SALT,'" said Kustoff. "Well, that's fine, but if you do that, how do you make up for $900 billion? These are the debates that we're having right now."
Funding problems are also stalking the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who are trying to put the Highway Trust Fund on the road to solvency while also passing a surface transportation bill to deal the country's troubled infrastructure.
"I'm going to guess it's going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a $600 billion bill," said T&I Committee Chair Sam Graves R – Mo.
"One of the things that we do have to do is to start recovering fees from electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. Right now, they don't pay anything for the use of the road, so that will add to the trust fund, hopefully to help make it solvent for years to come."
Many
The new Congress and administration are signaling a turn away from the all-encompassing nature of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by the Biden administration.
"This is going to be a traditional infrastructure bill, that means lanes of asphalt, pouring concrete and building bridges," said Graves.
"We're not going to be doing bike trails and that sort of thing. We're good at doing traditional infrastructure and that's a lot of roads and bridges."
