Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved by a vote of 266-167, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, a two-year budget deal that will help avert automatic, across-the-board budget cuts in fiscal years 2016 and 2017 through raising government spending levels by about $80 billion annually and suspending the national debt limit until March 2017. Seventy-nine Republicans joined with 167 Democrats in passing the act. The Senate is expected to pass the measure on Friday or over the weekend.

The Bipartisan Budget Act removes a statutory exemption from penalties under certain statutes, including the Occupational Safety & Health Act, from inflation for civil penalties. Unlike other similar civil penalties in federal law, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) civil penalties have been explicitly exempted from inflation since they were created in 1990. Under the Budget Act, OSHA will now have to report on their adjustment in their annual financial statements and via the Government Accountability Office. The bill also allows the agency to use a “catch up” formula to make up to 150 percent adjustments in the penalty in the first year to meet current inflation levels. The Secretary could limit the increases if there’s a negative economic impact that outweighs benefits and any proposed increase in penalties would go through the formal notice and comment process.

An AGC-supported provision within the Bipartisan Budget Act repeals the mandatory auto-enrollment of employees in employer-provided health care coverage. The provision originated in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and forced employers with more than 200 full-time employees to automatically enroll a new full-time employee in a health plan within 90 days if he or she fails to choose or decline coverage. Employers would have also been required to continue to enroll current employees in a health plan. The requirement was in addition to the ACA’s individual and employer mandates, and other employee benefit laws.

Extension Through Nov. 20 This week saw significant progress in moving a multi-year highway & transit bill. Following passage of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015 (STRRA) in the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee last week, the full House is expected to consider the bill next week.

This week there was movement in both the House and the Senate towards reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. The Act is a federal program that distributes more than $1 billion each year to the states to support career and technical education (CTE). The bill was last authorized in 2006 but has been funded through the annual appropriations process since it expired.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives elected Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) as the 54th Speaker to replace retiring Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). During his swearing-in ceremony, Speaker Ryan stated, “Let’s be frank: The House is broken. We are not solving problems. We are adding to them. And I am not interested in laying blame. We are not settling scores. We are wiping the slate clean. Neither the members nor the people are satisfied with how things are going. We need to make some changes, starting with how the House does business.” He laid out a return to regular order by “letting the committees retake the lead in drafting all major legislation” and including more minority party views.

On Oct. 28, 2016, AGC submitted comments as part of the Coalition for Workplace Safety in response to the Occupation Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) “Clarification of an Employers Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain Accurate Records of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses” proposed rule. This rule would revise the recordkeeping regulation to allow the agency to cite for inaccuracies on an employer’s OSHA 300 Log.

Recently, AGC sent letters opposing the possible use of a project labor agreement (PLA) mandate posted by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Southwest (NAVFAC) and the General Services Administration Mid-Atlantic Region (GSA). The letters address the possible use of mandatory PLAs involving the construction of the Special Operations Forces Logistics Support Unit One Operations Facility at the Navy’s Silver Strand Training Complex in Imperial Beach, California and a Measurement Systems Laboratory at the NASA Langley Research Center located in Hampton, Virginia.

Visit AGC’s Action Center at www.agc.org/TakeAction One of the numerous issues AGC is working on in the highway & transit bill is to provide some relief from hours of service restrictions on construction industry drivers. For the past 20 years, current law has provided a limited construction industry exemption which has had no negative impact on driver safety. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently provided an additional similar exemption for certain construction material deliveries. AGC is seeking to modernize the existing exemption to meet the challenges of construction material and equipment delivery.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) announced Wednesday that the committee is scheduled to take up transportation legislation on Thursday, Oct. 22. No details on the proposed measure were released, but the draft bill is expected to be made available tomorrow to allow time for committee members to review the text before the markup begins next week. The current extension of highway and transit programs ends Oct. 29 and it is expected that another short-term extension will be necessary to allow time for the House to complete action and conference with the Senate to negotiate the final bill. Many questions about what is likely to be in the bill are still unanswered, including length of the bill, funding levels and how the needed revenue will be provided. The Ways and Means Committee must address the revenue portion of the bill and no word has been given on when that will happen.