NSSGA, NAPA and NRMCA are joining forces on September 26 for Hill Day to share industry priorities with elected officials and policymakers. Together, our voice is stronger. Together, we achieve more. Together, we build!

Registration for the joint hill days for association members is $575 through July 29 and $675 beginning on July 30.

The construction materials industry is working to deliver the billions of tons of construction materials needed to build, repair and maintain  the roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, transit, ports, energy facilities (including solar and wind), water conveyance systems, broadband capacity and public works project funded through IIJA. At all stages of implementation, we encourage every federal agency to efficiently execute and deliver IIJA’s investment to project planners. 

 

• Buy America Exclusion Implementation – In August 2023, OMB Issue final guidance and an amendment to the Code of Federal Regulations implementing the Build America, Buy America Act (BABAA).  The OMB guidance correctly recognizes the Section 70917(c) exemption of “cement and cementitious materials, aggregates such as stone, sand, or gravel, or aggregate binding agents or additives” as well as wet concrete and asphalt. Implementation challenges persist, and will continue to persist, as State DOTs and other procurement authorities subject to BABAA, work to development compliant procurement regimes.  Reasonable guidance from the Federal Highway Administration on BABAA certification forms and process is needed to remove certification form confusion, inconsistency, and delay. Moreover, FHWA guidance clarifying BABAA compliance at the APL/QPLs level is also needed. Under current guidance, precast has a 55% threshold in order to comply with the Buy America Waiver. We will continue to ensure that threshold is maintained and not degraded in any form and OMB’s intention to regularly convene “inter-agency workgroups” to ensure “that federal agencies implement BABAA in a consistent, uniform, efficient and transparent manner” should include participation by State DOTs to hasten consistent BABAA implementation across all states. 

 

While IIJA takes a historic step in addressing our nation’s infrastructure challenges, there are still notable areas where Congress must act to ensure America does not fall further behind.  Below are the specific issues we continue to work on within this topic:

• Material Neutrality – We strongly believe Congress should maintain a material-neutral approach and should not legislate market share. We oppose attempts by competing materials to utilize legislation like the National Defense Authorization Act, the Farm Bill and appropriations bills to promote market share by establishing material-specific deployment programs. When executing federal investments, material choice decisions should be left to engineers and construction professionals who have the expertise and local knowledge needed to plan and successfully execute projects.

 

• Complete Annual Spending Bills – Completion of the 12 annual appropriations bills is critical to the aggregates and industrial sand industries, as they provide significant investment to infrastructure through discretionary programs and support the work of agencies that are essential to our the best interests of our nation businesses . Short-term and multiple stop-gap measures diminish the investments Congress previously allocated and waste taxpayer dollars, as state and local agencies are unable to reliably plan and successfully execute projects. 

 

• Highway Trust Fund Solvency – While we applaud Congress and the Biden Administration for providing five more years of solvency for the Highway Trust Fund, Congress must look beyond that timeframe to ensure long-term solvency. The next surface transportation reauthorization bill must incorporate visionary and evolutionary revenue increases to avoid a disastrous shortfall. We supports sustainable revenue sources to adequately fund needed investments and create financial certainty, including vehicle-miles-traveled (VMTs), bonding measures, registration fees for electrical vehicles, national registration fee and the raising and indexing of the federal gas tax, which has been unchanged for nearly 30 years. As discussions about the Highway Trust Fund unfold, we will advocate for a comprehensive consideration of all potential funding methods. It's crucial to explore sustainable and stable funding sources while explicitly avoiding reliance on yearly appropriations, which could jeopardize the consistency and effectiveness of infrastructure investments.

Please stay tuned for future LPF Preparation Webinar dates!

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