Focus on Government Affairs

• Senate Introduces Storage Technology for Renewable and Green Energy (Storage) Act of 2013

  

  The STORAGE Act provides a 20 percent investment tax credit of up to $40 million per project for grid-scale storage systems.  The total amount available for these projects is capped at $1.5 billion. The Act does not pick winners or losers in terms of storage technology or the source of energy stored, and instead allows the market to decide which technologies are best suited to meet energy needs.

  Click here to view a copy of the bill text and a one-page summary of the legislation.

• Jobs Growth

  NECA will continue to push for legislation that will create jobs in the construction sector. Overall, job growth has picked up over the last few months and the construction industry is no exception. In March, construction employment saw an uptick of approximately 18,000 jobs. Since September 2012, the industry has added a total of 169,000 jobs. In March 2013, employment continued to expand among specialty trade contractors (+23,000), consistent with the long term increase of 128,000 since September2012 which is equally split between the residential and nonresidential components.
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• Disaster Relief

  

  EPA Awards $569 Billion in Wastewater and Drinking Water Grants to New York and New Jersey 

  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on May 2 announced that it will provide grants of $340 million to the state of New York and $229 million to the state of New Jersey for improvements to wastewater and drinking water treatment facilities impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

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• NECA Continues Push for Estate Tax Repeal

  NECA partnered with the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition (FBETC) in a letter of support for Sen. John Thune’s (R-SD) amendment to the FY14 budget resolution to repeal the estate tax. Unfortunately, the estate tax amendment was rejected late Friday night and not included in the  Senate’s $3.7 trillion budget resolution, which passed in a 50-49 vote on March 23.  The good news, however, is that an amendment by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) which would repeal the onerous tax, provided Congress is able to offset the $200 billion price tag on the tax with revenue elsewhere, passed in a 80-19 vote.  With only 19 Democrats voting against the amendment, support to eliminate the tax continues to grow, as does efforts to address comprehensive tax reform.
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• Immigration Reform

  NECA remains very concerned with the details of the program as it would completely exclude the electrical construction industry. On April 3, 2013, NECA, along with five other construction business groups, released a  joint statement voicing our trepidation about the proposed guest worker program. The construction industry groups believe the size and scope of the program is too small and fails to meet the market demands of our industry. The statement was quickly picked up by dozens of news media outlets as the construction industry was the first group to voice their concerns with the "temporary guest worker deal" that was announced. See Politico article here.  
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• NECA On The Issues

  Be informed on issues affecting our industry. NECA prepares position statements on important issues in order to educate our members and the public on legislation vital to our industry. Learn About Issues that Affect NECA Contractors