The long August recess is over, and lawmakers have returned to Washington with only a few weeks left to pass a government spending bill that avoids another shutdown on October 1. With only 36 legislative days left in 2019, Congress will focus much of its time on moving a series of appropriations bills for fiscal year 2020, likely requiring a continuing resolution before October that would keep spending negotiations ongoing until mid-November or early December.

 

Last week, representatives from the short line railroad industry gathered in Washington to urge members of Congress for immediate action on the short line tax credit, which has now been expired for 20 months. While congressional and presidential politics are making it increasingly difficult for any bill to pass into law, legislation that makes the short line tax credit permanent has reached historical levels of support with 60 cosponsors in the Senate and 271 in the House, the most cosponsors the tax credit has ever had in either chamber of Congress. And House Democratic Leadership recently acknowledged the importance of a tax extenders bill that includes the short line tax credit, featuring it in a recently released list of priorities for the remainder of 2019.

 

This week, the Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up its transportation spending bill for 2020, providing a clearer picture on the future of transportation funding before negotiations with their counterparts in the House of Representatives. On September 24, the House Transportation & Infrastructure will hold a subcommittee hearing on opportunities and challenges facing commuter railroads. A list of witnesses has not been released yet but is expected to include Amtrak and a few commuter rail agencies across the country.

 

Finally, the railroad industry is closely monitoring a bill in the House requiring two people in the crew on all freight trains. Introduced by Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska), the bill ( H.R.1748 - Safe Freight Act of 2019) is slowly gaining steam with 106 cosponsors and would institute unnecessary regulations that disregard the freight rail industry's strong safety record.