Tax Provisions, Crew Rest Amendment Had Stalled The Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has scheduled a cloture vote on the FAA Reauthorization Bill for Thursday, expecting that there are now enough Democrats on board that the bill can be moved forward.

The bill had been stalled by a threat by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to filibuster the bill in an effort to include an amendment to increase the minimum crew rest for cargo pilots. Politico reports that Senator John Thune (R-SD) said that Boxer was preventing the Senate from obtaining unanimous consent for votes on amendments.

If the cloture vote is successful, it would end debate on the bill, but Thune cautioned that the debate could continue next week.

An earlier attempt by Senate Democrats to include unrelated renewable energy tax credits in the bill had slowed its progress. The Hill reports that Thune said that a decision was made "to go with a clean finance title, the way we’ve always handled FAA reauthorizations in the past.”

Democrats now say that they are fine with moving forward with cloture without the renewable energy tax credits, but some were still not happy about the decision. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) said that there are other tax credits included in the bill that are not germane to the issue, and all they wanted were the alternative energy provisions.

Thune said that both sides finally came to the realization that the bill was becoming to "Christmas Tree'd" with tax measures, and "in the interest of trying to move the bill along, it was better that we get to a final vote.”

FMI: www.senate.gov