Gov. Susana Martinez, Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, and Rep. Steve Pearce gathered Monday in Santa Teresa to mark the groundbreaking for a $400 million Union Pacific project near the U.S.-Mexico border. The new 2,200 acre facility will measure 11.5 miles long by one mile wide and “include fueling facilities, crew change buildings, locomotive inspection tracks, an intermodal ramp and a switching yard,” according to a Union Pacific press release.

The release adds that the project will create 3,000 construction jobs over four years and 600 permanent jobs upon completion.

“Union Pacific deserves great credit for reminding us, with the investment they’re now making today and the work they’re beginning today, that the economy of this country is going to come roaring back, and they’re going to be ready when it does come roaring back,” said Bingaman.

The U.S. Senate approved Tuesday the debt deal, the Budget Control Act of 2011, by a vote of 74-26, with 45 Democrats and 28 Republicans voting yes, including New Mexico Democratic Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall.

The House passed the bill Monday and President Obama signed it into law later Tuesday afternoon. Nineteen Senate Republicans, six Democrats and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont voted no.

With the passage of the bill, the U.S. Treasury Department has an immediate $400 billion more in borrowing authority. Another $500 billion is all but guaranteed to be approved unless Congress overrides a presidential veto by a two-thirds vote. Future debt ceiling increases between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion can be requested by President Obama depending on whether a balanced budget amendment is approved.

The plan includes $2.1 trillion in budget cuts over ten years.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) is “weighing retirement” for 2012, according to a report from Politico.

Bingaman, 67, has served in the Senate since 1983, and has not had a serious challenger since 1994. There has been some speculation that former Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) will run against Bingaman in 2012 — she lost the 2008 Republican primary for Senate to Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM).

In a conversation with New Mexico radio reporters yesterday, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, weighed on the idea that not keeping tax cuts in place for those with incomes over $250,000 would hamper economic recovery.  Most economists don’t believe it would, he said.

“Most economists I’ve heard from say that that’s not the case,” he said. “…clearly keeping taxes where they have been for the vast majority of Americans makes good sense in this economic downturn. And that’s what would be the case if we were to keep in place the tax provisions for everyone with up to $250,000 of income, that’s 98 percent of the population.”

“The remaining 2 percent will of course get the same lower taxes for the first 250,000 of income they receive, but they would then pay higher percentage on income above that 250,000 and most economists think that would not be a substantial drag on the economy.”

Bingaman also said it would be difficult to get things done in the lame duck session. This year the congress has had great difficulty getting over the procedural obstacles established by Republicans in the nature of filibusters, he said, so there are a lot of items still remaining unattended to, like the tax provisions. He’s not sure the congress will be able to get to everything before January, he concluded.

At the meeting sponsored by New Mexico First, participant Ozawa Bineshi Albert asked Bingaman to address not just abortion but the entire spectrum of women’s reproductive health.

“Comprehensive reproductive health includes a lot more for women [than just abortion services] and I’d like to know what you would do to ensure that with this current reform to address health inequities and coverage for women… including maternity care, pregnancy care, STD’s, and contraception,” she asked.

Bingaman responded there were provisions in the insurance reforms in the bills that barred discrimination in policies based on gender.  And, he said, the basic services in the benefit packages that all policies would have to cover would be determined by the secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, modeled after the package of services offered now by the typical employer insurance program. Otherwise, he said, he didn’t think the Congress itself ought to micromanage what should be in the benefit plans.

Albert followed up by pointing out that most plans don’t cover contraception.

“You raise a good point,” he said, “and maybe that’s an exception that we ought to specify.”

New Mexico will also lose spots on the Senate and House appropriations committees, which determine federal spending levels and earmarks.

All of the state’s representatives in Washington, as well as lobbyists, are aware of the new challenges that the delegation will face as it tries to preserve federal funding for New Mexico’s military installations and national laboratories, while also protecting the state’s energy industry.

“Obviously, seniority matters, and we are going to have to spend a few years rebuilding seniority for the state delegation,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, the senior Democrat who has served in the Senate for 26 years.

“Tom [Udall] has a lot of experience in Congress and has a lot of friends in the Senate. He will be very able to be effective from the first day he is sworn in. The House members will have more of a learning curve to climb up, since all three are new.”

The members of the new delegation met in Bingaman’s office last month to discuss how they could work together, but the reality is that new members do not have much control in choosing committee assignments, particularly in the House where the decision is left up to the Steering and Policy Committee, a panel of senior Democratic party leaders and committee chairmen.

On some policy issues, regional alliances could trump seniority and party affiliation. The Western Caucus, a group of House lawmakers from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and elsewhere, can shift the outcome of legislation if they organize themselves.

But New Mexicans with experience on Capitol Hill are concerned that won’t be enough.

“When it comes to seniority, we’ve been crippled by the amount of power we lost and ability to have an effect on issues important to the state’s future,” Marco Gonzales, an Albuquerque lawyer who worked for Domenici, said.

“That’s a crippling loss of experience and seniority that in the House and Senate translates into power and ability to get things done. That is going to be what’s critical to New Mexico.”

Lobbyists, too, are wary about the effectiveness of such a freshman-heavy delegation.

“Those of us who are familiar with the workings of Congress understand how important seniority is and the relationships that have developed over time are. From that aspect I absolutely have concerns that we’ve lost a lot of stroke, if you will,” said Bob Gallagher, the president of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, a pressure group that lobbies state and federal lawmakers.

Moreover, the benefits of seniority are not always clear to the naked eye. Nobody knows how many times retiring Sen. Pete Domenici blocked spending cuts to New Mexico’s federal installations, for instance. And, although it was not well-known, retiring Rep. Steve Pearce successfully blocked a fellow Republicans from closing a federal law enforcement training center.

“Not only do I have concerns about the items we know about, it’s the items that we never knew about. Whether [it was] something good for New Mexico or something that was prevented behind the scenes that was bad for New Mexico,” Gallagher added.

Pressure on Bingaman

Domenici is retiring after 36 years in Congress and, as a result, he will give up his top spot on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Sen.-elect Tom Udall, who is leaving the House after 10 years, had just won an appointment to serve on the House Appropriations Committee last year. He will give up the seat.

“Domenici will be greatly missed in same way as Clinton P. Anderson, who retired in 1973, and Joe Montoya and Harrison Schmidt,” Kevin Noark, the spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL), said.

“Both of those senators were strong supporters of the lab. But the lab has always forged a strong working relationship with [New Mexico’s congressional delegation] throughout the years, and that we do not expect to change.”

In 2007, the House approved a $400 million spending cut in funding for Los Alamos, but some of the money was restored in the Senate. With three new House members representing New Mexico, the lab’s advocates are more concerned than ever.

In the House and Senate, it is unlikely that freshman lawmakers will get to serve on the Appropriations Committee or two so-called “exclusive” committees in the House, including Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce.

“I’d be very surprised if any of the freshmen get on the exclusive committees,” Rep.-elect Martin Heinrich said.

Like most lawmakers, Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, also a Democrat, said that they want to match their districts’ needs with their respective interests.

“I have been in discussion with leadership and [the Democratic] Steering and Policy Committee, figuring out how best to use my skill set,” Heinrich said, adding that he wants to serve on a committee that addresses the issues he ran on, including the war in Iraq and energy policy.

“A lot of different committees, Science, Armed Services, Education and Labor, Natural Resources, and Transportation have direct relevance to the 1st Congressional District,” he said.

Lujan, a member of the state’s Public Regulation Commission, said he has approached his committee assignments by trying to match those areas where New Mexico needs support and where he has the “expertise in various areas that would enable me to hit the ground running.”

While key committee assignments will help New Mexico stanch some of the loss in seniority, Bingaman, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Udall will play a disproportionate role in protecting New Mexico’s interests.

Bingaman held a hearing on Wednesday to review investments in alternative and traditional energy projects that could be included in a stimulus package that congressional Democrats are expected to take up in early 2009.

Bingaman also serves on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which reviews all tax legislation coming out of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“A lot is going to be falling on the shoulders of Sen. Bingaman,” said Gonzales, the former Domenici staffer. “In the House, we will have very little impact in terms of appropriations committees. In terms of spending cuts at the labs, [there will be] little defense provided by freshman members.”

His statement, issued at a climate conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and reported by The Associated Press, may conflict with the stated goals of President-elect Obama, who has said he wants to move more quickly.

Bingaman said efforts to cap greenhouse gases must continue, but that creating a national cap-and-trade system to gradually cut carbon emissions is too complex to draft and implement in 2009:

“The reality is, it may take more than the first year to get it all done,” Bingaman told a carbon markets conference here [in Washington].

He said Congress will work next year on other conservation measures and requiring electric utilities to use more renewable energy, even as it works toward creating a cap-and-trade plan to ratchet down gas emissions over the next 40 years.

An Obama adviser, however, says the president could take on the global-warming challenge administratively. Potential steps include allowing California to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks and having the Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide.

According the AP:

Jason Grumet, a senior environmental adviser to the president-elect and on the short list for a position in the White House, predicted at the same conference Wednesday that it was going to be a “very, very busy 2009″ on climate.