On May 18, the Senate Finance Committee held a full committee hearing titled, “Funding and Financing Options to Bolster American Infrastructure.” The next day, the House Ways and Means Committee followed suit with a hearing on “Leveraging the Tax Code for Infrastructure Investment.” At both hearings, members discussed potentially reviving taxable municipal bonds, similar to the Build America Bonds program that expired during the Obama Administration.
APGA submitted a statement for the record for both hearings this week. At the Senate Finance hearing, members discussed Senators Wicker (R-Miss.) and Bennet’s (D-Colo.) bipartisan American Infrastructure Bonds (AIB) bill. APGA supports this legislation, and the statement for the hearing details why. Specifically, the taxable bonds market is larger than the tax-exempt bonds market and allowing state and local governments to issue such bonds would provide greater access to capital. These bonds also come at a lower cost to the issuer because the Treasury Department pays a percentage of the bond’s interest.
On the House side, Representative Sewell (D-Ala.) has introduced legislation that also allows the issuance of taxable bonds, but there are significant differences between her bill and the Senate AIB legislation. APGA’s statement for the Ways and Means hearing does not take a position on her bill, and instead expresses more general support for the use of taxable municipal bonds.
A copy of APGA’s submission for the House Ways and Means hearing record is available
here. The submission to Senate Finance is available
here.
For questions on this article, please contact Emily Wong of APGA staff by phone at 202-470-4262 or by email at
ewong@apga.org.