ADVOCATING FOR YOU By Cade Clark and John Shea


Ushering in 2021 New year, new Congress, new leadership … same politics.


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T’S THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE NEW YEAR, and Congress and the states are busy legislating. The first session of the 117th Congress has seen some historic moments in its first few months, while state legislators have already started their mad dash toward adjournment. Before we look at where Congress is going, however, let’s do a quick review of where we’ve been since we last reported.


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Leadership Changes Democrats now control the Senate by a razor-thin margin, but Democrat and Republican Senate leaders reached a power-sharing agreement for governing their chamber. This agreement is based on a similar deal from 2001, which is the last time the chamber was divided 50–50. Under this agreement, the Democrats control the committees and assume the majority with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote. There have been only three prior instances of an evenly split Senate, in 1881, 1953, and 2001. House and Senate com-


Legislative Action Center rotor.org/lac


mittees have organized, and multiple freshman members joined the two dedicated to transportation: the US Senate


Committee on Com merce, Science, and Transportation and the House Committee on Transporta tion and Infrastructure. The House committee maintains its lead- ership under Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.-04) and Ranking Member Sam Graves (R-Mo.-06). The commit- tee’s Aviation Subcommittee is chaired by Rick Larsen (D-Wash.-02) with Garret Graves (R-La.-06) as ranking member.


In the Senate, the gavel changed hands with the new Democratic majority. The Senate Commerce Committee is now led by Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and


12 ROTOR MARCH 2021


Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). The commit- tee’s Aviation Safety, Operations, and Innovation Subcommittee is chaired by Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). A more detailed overview of committee makeup can be found in HAI’s members-only Legislative Action Center.


COVID Relief Passing COVID-19 relief legislation was a top legislative priority both at the end of the last Congress and the beginning of the new session. At the conclusion of the 116th Congress, lawmakers passed a $900 billion coro- navirus aid package that was attached to a $1.4 trillion government funding bill. The relief package included $284 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and $20 billion for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. The legislation allows businesses to deduct expenses associated with their forgiven PPP loans, in addition to expanding the employee retention credit intended to prevent layoffs. The package also included $15 billion for renewal of the Payroll Support Program (PSP) for air car- riers and made important changes to the program’s award calculation, providing a 15% increase to account for a discrepancy based on forms some air carriers origi- nally filed to report their salaries and benefits. HAI worked closely with Congress to ensure HAI members were included in this important program and to resolve the funding discrepancy, and those efforts have paid off: as of this writing, HAI members have received more than $179 million in PSP funding. Pivoting to the 117th Congress, President Joe Biden released the “American Rescue Plan” as a legislative proposal to address the continuing effects of the COVID- 19 pandemic. On March 11, President Biden signed into law the largest stimulus package that Congress passed through the budget reconciliation process. The measure includes a new $3 billion program for aviation manufac- turing workers that would help prevent involuntary fur- loughs of thousands of workers at some 5,000


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