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In the end, it had support from 19 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The Senate on Tuesday approved an expansive bill to rebuild the nation’s aging roads and bridges, with $8.3 billion specifically targeted to water infrastructure projects in the West and billions more to fund national projects to mitigate the impact of wildfires. The proposals included two GOP bills related to US Department of Energy efficiency standards. One would prevent the DOE from updating conservation standards for electric distribution transformers for five years, while the other would overhaul the process for forming DOE efficiency standards for all products. City Council President Nury Martinez said officials were working to spread the word through the Help Is On The Way campaign because "even now, there are utility debt programs available that many Angelenos simply don't know are available to them." The Climate Change Superfund will ensure that New Yorkers are not left holding the bag for all these costs.
US House passes energy spending bill with climate law cuts; Biden vows to veto
Funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act and the state allowed the program to eliminate utility debt from 280,000 households and businesses in Los Angeles, officials said Wednesday. An earlier version of the program also used $50 million through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Best of all, economists agree that because of the way the Superfund is designed, Big Oil companies will not be able to pass on the costs to consumers. The oil companies know this, and that’s why they strongly oppose Superfund while supporting carbon pricing plans, like the governor’s Cap & Invest program, that are designed to allow them to pass costs along. The Climate Change Superfund Act would save New Yorkers $3 billion per year for the next 25 years. Currently, taxpayers, businesses, and individuals are paying 100% of the costs of repairing from, and preparing for, extreme weather events driven by climate change.
Democrats Appropriations Committee
"We want to see businesses and individuals feel like they can clear the plate and not stress out about COVID long after it's gone because they're carrying debt with their utility," Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday. "So the weight that's now been lifted off the shoulders of Angelenos, the opportunities to move forward that have now opened up, is what we're celebrating today." Asked whether local MPs on the panel - Conservative Lia Nici and Labour's Melanie Onn - could change her mind, Shannon said "possibly", but reiterated how let down local people feel. Speaking on the Politics Hub With Sophy Ridge, small business owner Shannon said she might not vote in the next general election later this year as she "just can't trust anything anybody says".
Editorial: California’s transportation spending doesn’t match its climate promises
Huge gap on spending bill policy riders as time dwindles - Roll Call
Huge gap on spending bill policy riders as time dwindles.
Posted: Thu, 08 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Such mandatory spending is estimated to total nearly $3.98 trillion in the current fiscal year, or 62.4% of all federal outlays. The legislative session had come to a close in Sacramento, and elected officials had approved a whole bunch of climate change, energy and environment bills — and rejected others. Although not a few worthwhile projects fell away before the final version was passed, the result is spectacular. Biden describes some provisions as “human infrastructure,” some of which have been held over for the Build Back Better bill still on the table in Congress. More than $3.3 billion would fund wildfire risk reduction, such as mechanical thinning and controlled burns.
The suit was filed by the Western Watersheds Project, which is also one of the groups suing the federal government for failing to conduct required environmental reviews for grazing permits on public lands across the West, per Kylie Mohr at High Country News. In other wildlife news, wild burros — descended from domesticated donkeys left behind by gold miners more than a century ago — are wreaking ecological havoc in Big Bear Valley, in California’s San Bernardino Mountains. In other news about oil and gas facilities in our communities, a long-awaited study of the health consequences of the Aliso Canyon gas leak is finally getting underway, with dozens of UCLA researchers involved, as Olga Grigoryants reports for the L.A. I can also confirm that no one has appealed an Aliso Canyon leak settlement with Southern California Gas Co. that critics see as wildly inadequate, as I recently reported. The state’s Public Utilities Commission has also eliminated a “withdrawal protocol” that limited when Aliso Canyon could be used. The subcommittee considered 12 bills to support nuclear energy and improve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing process, including by setting clearer timeframes, reducing hourly fees for advanced reactors, and avoiding duplicative environmental reviews.
U.S. probes whether Tesla Autopilot recall did enough to make sure drivers pay attention
The one-time grants are available to Edison customers who meet the program’s income limits. To apply, contact one of the more than 80 community service agencies listed by the fund online, including Chinatown Service Center, San Pedro Service Center and multiple branches of the Salvation Army. Tens of thousands of Angelenos are getting some relief from the state for their past-due electric and gas bills, just as huge new bills for natural gas service are landing in their mailboxes. Should the Oct. 1 deadline pass without either a new set of spending bills or a continuing resolution, operations considered nonessential would be forced to shut down. The most recent such shutdown lasted 35 days, from Dec. 22, 2018, to Jan. 25, 2019. Most federal spending, including spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation and other entitlement programs, is mandated by the statutes governing those programs.
The state should also expect $9.45 billion for public transportation and $384 million to expand an electric vehicle charging station network statewide. California will receive a minimum of $100 million to expand broadband access. An additional $124 million will be available for protection from wildfires and cyberattacks such as ransomware. As the largest state, California stands to gain the largest share of much of this spending, based partially on statutory formulas.
Short-term stopgap bill appears likely as funding talks drag - Roll Call
Short-term stopgap bill appears likely as funding talks drag.
Posted: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Public defenders, foster kids, climate: Programs created during California’s boom may stall amid deficit
Eastern Kentucky gains important funding in the bill, including Congressman Rogers' Community Project Funding request for $500,000 for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study flood control options along the Kentucky River, following historic flooding in the region in 2022 and 2021. House Democrats were united in their opposition, voting unanimously against the bill.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
There’s $5 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency to hold corporations to their stated claims to reduce pollution from their operations. In a sharp departure from Republican doctrine, the bill allocates $365 million to NASA for research in Earth science, meaning global warming. That sum, moreover, is to be expended over five years, making the average cost of new spending $110 billion a year, or a bit over 2.5% more than federal spending in 2019. Conservatives’ claims that this bill will break the bank are plainly hogwash. That said, the Democratic Party now faces the task of communicating to voters how much it has done for them.
The CAPP aid arrived in two installments, with about $990 million paid to utilities by the end of January 2022 and almost $650 million paid in November. The utilities were given 60 days to put the funds into their customers’ accounts, which means the second round of credits should appear on utility bills no later than February. Chairwoman Kay Granger's opening remarks are available here.Subcommittee Chairman Chuck Fleischmann's opening remarks are available here. Bill report, before adoption of amendments in Full Committee, is available here. A table of included Community Project Funding requests is available here. Put it together and it becomes evident that infrastructure is no longer properly thought of as bricks and mortar.
The Senate has demonstrated that it has taxpayers’ backs, putting the Climate Change Superfund in the Senate one-house budget proposal. Unfortunately, the governor’s administration remains opposed to this common-sense measure. Newsom also wants to allow the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank, known as IBank, and the Department of Water Resources to take advantage of and leverage federal funding for projects that reduce greenhouse gas.
After a budget resolution is adopted, Congress is supposed to pass a series of separate bills funding various federal agencies and activities. For more than a decade, the number of spending bills has stood at 12, one for each pair of subcommittees on the House and Senate appropriations committees. The deadline for doing that is Oct. 1, when the new fiscal year starts. Ahead of final passage, the House adopted several amendments, including measures to block finalizing energy conservation standards for consumer furnaces and water heaters. Another amendment would prohibit consideration of the government's social cost of greenhouse gases when developing agency budgets, federal procurement processes or environmental reviews. California agencies and nonprofits will receive more than $100 million in federal Inflation Reduction Act funding to plant trees — many of them in the low-income neighborhoods and communities of color suffering the most as the planet heats up.
Though the act of passing a preliminary budget and following up with an amended bill later has become commonplace in Newsom’s tenure, an estimated budget deficit of at least $31.5 billion has heightened Democratic discord at the state Capitol this year. Interest groups are lobbying to preserve funding promised in stronger revenue years and Newsom and lawmakers continue to squabble over where to pare back spending. The BLS is committed to providing data promptly and according to established schedules. Automated retrieval programs (commonly called "robots" or "bots") can cause delays and interfere with other customers' timely access to information. Therefore, bot activity that doesn't conform to BLS usage policy is prohibited. According to Edison, the second round of funding should eliminate all of the past-due balances accrued during the pandemic period, including the portion not canceled in the first round.
The Build Back Better program cancels any existing drilling leases and orders any payments made by the lessees to be returned to them within 30 days. The totals in this category are hard to calculate, because the spending is distributed among several sections and subsections. But the Biden administration broadens the definition of infrastructure to include means to combat global warming, to strengthen labor laws and privacy protections, to prepare for the next pandemic (or pandemics), and to stop tax cheating by wealthy Americans. This legislation takes the vital step of ending the Biden Administration's Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, empowering states to manage waterways historically outside federal control.
In the most extreme case, the final spending bill for fiscal 2017 didn’t become law until May 2017, more than seven months into the fiscal year. In short, the typical appropriations process isn’t the orderly one laid out in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act. Instead, it’s a hodgepodge of late budget blueprints, temporary spending measures to keep the government running, and sprawling omnibus appropriations packages that often are passed in the waning days before one Congress ends and the next one begins. The House GOP bill differs in many ways from the Senate Committee on Appropriations' fiscal year 2024 proposal. The Senate legislation, which passed out of committee with bipartisan support, proposed budget increases for the DOE's renewables office and Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. Together, NY HEAT and the Climate Change Superfund Act will save New Yorkers billions of dollars every year for decades to come, while putting our state on the path to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and protecting our families from the impacts of the climate crisis.
The utility said that 39% of its customers are receiving credits of $500 or more this round, about 42% are receiving credits of $100 to $500, and the remaining credits were for $100 or less. If you fell behind on your gas or electric bill during the pandemic, you should receive a credit without having to apply for one. Similarly, we identified all budget resolutions agreed to since 1975 and when they passed relative to the CBA deadlines. Those include federal waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, which should be of special interest here in Southern California, given our recent experience with an oil spill from an underwater offshore pipeline. Although the infrastructure bill is described as a $1.2-trillion measure, it actually encompasses $550 billion in new spending — that is, allocations beyond what Congress was already planning to spend. Army Corps of Engineers, the bill protects Congressman Rogers' annual requested prohibition preventing the Army Corps from carrying out a water-supply reallocation study for Lake Cumberland to protect local communities from being charged fees for accessing the lake for municipal water supply.
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