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September-October 2021

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PalletCentral • September-October 2021 13 Jason Ortega is vice president, public affairs, at NWPCA. He also manages the NWPCA Political Action Committee for the Association. He may be reached at jortega@palletcentral.com or by calling 703.519.6104. customarily requires 60 votes. The reconciliation process allows Democrats to pass a bill without Republican support if they secure a "yes" vote from every Democratic senator. As you can imagine, that is not very easy. Further complicating the process is the requirement that provisions in a reconciliation bill must directly impact the federal budget, which means that policy changes and many Democratic priorities, like increasing the minimum wage, will not pass via reconciliation. In the reconciliation process, once the House and Senate pass the budget resolution that triggers reconciliation, the hard part begins – drafting the actual bill language. Multiple committees in the House and Senate must come to an agreement on what spending to include and what amounts. There are competing points of view. Hanging over all of this is the expectation that the Democrats will lose control of one or both chambers of Congress, meaning that this may be individual Members' last chance for many years to tackle their priorities. They will dig in. They will fight. They will drag it out for months. Unfortunately, if Democrats in the House refuse to vote on the bipartisan bill until a reconciliation package has passed the Senate, this critical infrastructure investment may not become law until late this year. So, what are we doing? We have joined with our partners in urging Congress to pass the bipartisan legislation quickly. This investment in infrastructure cannot wait. We are also working to prevent harmful policies, like a rollback of the 2017 tax reforms, from making it into the reconciliation package. Now is not the time to raise taxes. Rather, Congress should invest in making it easier for employers to find qualified labor, provide incentives to make capital investments, and they should incentivize the use of more sustainable products, like USDA BioPreferred® PDS-designed wooden pallets. Those are the priorities that we are urging Congress to focus on. NWPCA's prior and future policy successes are made possible by your engagement with our letter-writing campaigns, opening up of your facilities for Members of Congress to visit, the Pallet Foundation's invaluable research, and your active support of our advocacy efforts.

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