Congress last passed a water bill in 2007. Senators expect water bill won't sink

Rank-and-file senators working on a sweeping new water bill have a message for Harry Reid: We’re available.

The Senate majority leader has been reaching out to his committee chairmen in search of legislation he could quickly move to the floor after the chamber wraps up more pressing fiscal matters and returns from its two-week Easter recess on April 8.


And both Democrats and Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee are signaling that their bipartisan water bill — expected to clear the panel Wednesday — will be ready to go.

“We’re available,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chairman of the committee’s water panel, told POLITICO. “This is gonna have strong bipartisan support, and I think there will be a commitment to keep it together. It’s one of those that I think is eligible for the floor.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he, too, hopes the upper chamber will take up the water resources infrastructure bill soon, while Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) said panel members have been talking up the legislation to leadership.

In an interview Tuesday, Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois acknowledged that Reid and committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) have been discussing bringing the bill before the full Senate sometime in the spring.

“[Reid] supports it, and I do too,” said Durbin, who has made Mississippi River commerce a key focus of late. Boxer told POLITICO it was her understanding that Reid was trying to make floor time for the bill sometime in April after the Senate takes up gun legislation.

Later in the day, Reid told Senate Democrats at lunch that he plans to move to the water bill in April or May, Boxer said.

The committee is expected to easily pass the Water Resources Development Act out of a Wednesday markup after the liberal Boxer and conservative ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) rolled out the 284-page bill Monday. That means Senate leadership will return next month to a water bill largely free of controversy, perhaps a relief after the upper chamber deals with guns.

“This seems to be an obvious candidate with the markup expected to go smoothly,” said one Senate aide who’s been tracking the water bill. “Reid is considering WRDA among a handful of other things. And when we come back [into session], he’ll be looking for items to put on the floor.”

Reid could also turn to executive branch nominees still working their way through the confirmation process, including President Barack Obama’s pick to lead the Interior and Energy departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.

But one factor favoring quick floor action on the water bill is that it’s been in the works since the last Congress. Boxer floated a draft in late 2012 to get the conversation going among senators, and she has since added language intended to attract a diverse group of supporters.

One example: The draft includes an effort to make sure that money coming into the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund gets spent every year rather than being stacked onto a surplus that has reached nearly $7 billion and an attempt to prioritize investment on deepwater ports. That last provision appeals to coastal senators from the East, West and Gulf coasts — but it also includes a set-aside for small ports so as not to overly concentrate on megaports like those in California and Louisiana, the home states of the committee leaders.

The legislation has items that will appeal to people across the ideological spectrum — including a new innovative financing measure based on Boxer and Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe’s previous success in expanding the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act.

Committee member Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said the financing piece — nicknamed WIFIA by Boxer — is his main issue, and he hopes Congress’s laser focus on roads and bridges can shift to WRDA, a much quieter issue. Merkley said water issues come up at nearly every town hall he holds across Oregon.

“We talk about highways a lot, but water makes a huge difference in a community’s success,” Merkley said.

The bill also includes something for noncoastal states — a study on inland waterways revenue collection. And it attempts to skirt the de facto ban on earmarks by creating benchmarks for new water projects to meet in order to get funding from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It’s a new idea for the massive water bill, which in past Congresses was hung with local projects like a Christmas tree.

“It’s a challenge for them in a nonearmark environment,” said Jim Walker, a lobbyist for the American Association of Port Authorities.

But as with any large bill, pitfalls could lie ahead. If the wrangling over the stopgap spending bill this week is any clue, senators will want to propose dozens of parochial amendments to the WRDA bill once it’s considered by the full Senate. The threat could be particularly acute for WRDA because of the large contingent of senators still serving in Congress who are used to being able to fund projects in their backyards.

The bill also could face a House-Senate timing issue before it gets to the president’s desk. It might be months before the House advances to the point the Senate reached this week, although work is quietly ramping up on a sister piece of WRDA legislation in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster said Boxer had a four-month head start on the bill, and his members are significantly less seasoned on the issue. Boozman, for example, has been steeped in the issue since his time serving in the House. Shuster, meanwhile, has a committee filled with members who have never taken on a WRDA bill.

Congress last passed a WRDA in 2007, an accomplishment that required the first successful override of a George W. Bush veto. The previous WRDA had passed in 2000.

“You’ve got 46 percent of the members in Congress today — 201 — who weren’t here in 2007. So they need to figure out why a WRDA bill is important,” Shuster said.

So as the Senate committee sits down Wednesday to pass its WRDA bill, the House’s water panel will convene a day later for a roundtable on the why the legislation is important.

“It’s going to take us some time,” Shuster said.

Adam Snider contributed to this report.