New legislation proposed in Congress would eliminate the appropriations bottleneck affecting the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, taking it “off budget” to ensure the nation’s ports are properly maintained.
Currently, Congress must make appropriations in each budget cycle to the Army Corps of Engineers from the trust fund to maintain and operate port infrastructure.
The bill, introduced in April by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., would change the process and set up automatic appropriations based on the tax revenue collected.
The Harbor Maintenance Tax is an excise tax collected from shippers specifically to maintain harbors and ports. Currently the tax generates about $1.7 billion annually, but Congress has restricted spending on harbor maintenance due to budgetary constraints, resulting in “crumbling infrastructure and harbors choked with sand and silt.”
The tax was created as part of the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 and was levied upon shippers for port use associated with imports, exports and the movement of cargo and passengers between U.S. ports. In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that taxing export products was unconstitutional.
This story is from the August 2017 edition of Professional Mariner.
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This story is from the August 2017 edition of Professional Mariner.
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