Despite a threatened presidential veto, the House has approved a bill that would authorize $14 billion over four years in aid to state revolving funds that finance sewage treatment plant construction around the country. The bill, which passed March 9 by a 303-108 vote, was praised by construction industry groups and is the first reauthorization of the Clean Water Act SRF program to clear the House since 1995.

The bill provides $2 billion for SRFs in fiscal 2008 and increases the amount by $1 billion per year, reaching $5 billion in 2011. The legislation was scaled back from a $20-billion, five-year version that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved on Feb. 7.

Authorizations, however, are subject to annual appropriations, which have been far short of $2 billion. Appropriations in fiscal 2007 are $1.08 billion, up from $887 million in 2006. President Bush has proposed cutting the program to $688 million in 2008.

The day before the House vote, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement warning that Bush's "senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill." OMB objected to a provision requiring Davis-Bacon Act prevailing-wage levels to apply to projects financed by the state revolving fund aid. It also criticized the bill's funding levels as "excessive" and "unrealistic in the current fiscal environment." The margin of the vote exceeds the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

"This bill has been a long time in coming," said Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.), the measure's sponsor. "We have worked at least 11 years to replenish the State Revolving Fund so that states and local communities can expand their capacity to deal with wastewater, but reauthorizing this vital program has been delayed in the past six Congresses."

Battles over Davis-Bacon have been a stumbling block to passing Clean Water SRF bills over the past decade. Before the new bill was approved, Oberstar and his pro-union allies defeated an attempt by Republicans to cut the Davis-Bacon language. The committee's top Republican, John Mica of Florida, criticized the Davis-Bacon provision as "the mother of all unfunded mandates" and "an earmark for labor union bosses that will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars."

Attention will now shift to the Senate, where a companion bill has not yet been introduced.