Congress Completes Omnibus Package with Funding for ACE; House Expected to Vote on Dec. 18

Congressional appropriators finished an omnibus bill for fiscal 2016 that would provide $829.5 million for operation and improvement of CBP automation expenses, including $151.2 million set aside for Automated Commercial Environment development (here). The bill requires that $53 million of the ACE funding is spent by Sept. 30, 2018. Overall, the bill includes $8.6 billion for CBP, $3.3 million of which would be drawn from the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund. Additionally, the bill would allocate $30 million until Sept. 30, 2017 for recruiting, training, and equipping law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents. The House is expected to vote on the legislation Dec. 18, said a House staffer.

The bill would also give less than the Obama administration’s requests of $115 million for the Bureau of Industry and Security and $131.5 million for the International Trade Commission. Notably, the bill falls $43 million short of the administration’s ITC request, but it would bump up spending for the commission by more than $5 million, compared to fiscal 2014 (see 1502020057). While the appropriations legislation would give $2.5 million less than the White House’s request for BIS, the listed amount would be a $10 million increase over current levels.

Under the legislation, $5.8 billion would be allotted to ICE, with $10 million provided for special customs operations. However, the legislation would direct $100 million to be withheld until the ICE director submits a report including the number of full-time equivalent employees hired and lost through attrition between Oct. 1, 2015, and June 30, 2016, to the congressional appropriations committees. The bill would also provide $900 million for the Special Defense Acquisition Fund, an account in place to expedite foreign military procurements of U.S.-made military items.

Repeals on the oil export ban and mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) are also included in the year-end fiscal 2016 appropriations bill. WTO announced last week that Canada and Mexico can assess tariffs on over $1 billion of U.S.-made goods. COOL requires meat labels to identify where livestock were born, raised, and slaughtered, and the two countries have claimed that the labeling gives U.S. products an unfair advantage. “For several years now, the writing has been on the wall that U.S. COOL requirements for meat were doomed at the WTO. Since its inception, I have warned that retaliation was coming, and I’m pleased American agriculture and businesses will escape these tariffs,” Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman Senate Agriculture Committee, said in a statement (here).