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Byron Brown

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Byron R. Brown is a senior counsel in the Washington D.C. office. He is in the firm’s Government Affairs and Environment & Natural Resources groups. Byron has almost two decades of experience working at the intersection of law and policy and has experience negotiating legislation, drafting regulations, managing congressional investigations, preparing regulatory comments, and developing and executing government affairs strategies before Congress and the executive branch. Earlier in his career, Byron worked for more than a decade as an attorney in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of General Counsel, including several years as associate deputy general counsel during both the Bush and Obama administrations. After leaving EPA, Byron served as senior counsel and director of oversight and investigations for the Committee on Natural Resources for the U.S. House of Representatives and then as senior counsel for the Committee on Environment and Public Works in the U.S. Senate. He also has experience as a legislative fellow in the personal office of a U.S. Senator. Prior to joining the firm in August 2018, Byron served as deputy chief of staff for policy at the EPA, where he coordinated the agency’s work on infrastructure and led several rulemaking initiatives.

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On March 9, 2023, President Biden released his fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request outlining the administration’s priorities, including a nearly 10 percent increase in discretionary spending over the current enacted funding levels. The President’s budget requests a total of $6.9 trillion federal spending for FY 2024. Of this amount, $4.2 trillion would be in mandatory spending and $1.9 trillion would be in discretionary spending. Defense spending would receive an approximately 3 percent increase from FY 2023 for a total of $885 billion in discretionary spending, while non-defense spending would receive a nearly 4 percent increase from FY 2023 levels for a total of $1.02 trillion in FY 2024. The President’s budget request proposes a 7 percent increase over current non-defense spending level and tax increases among other proposed revenue raisers designed to lower the national deficit by $3 trillion over the next 10 years. 

The President’s budget request is the first step in the annual appropriations process. As the U.S. Congress holds the power of the purse, the next step is for Congress to pass a budget resolution, which provides a blueprint for all budget-related legislation, including the topline numbers governing discretionary spending for the upcoming fiscal year. The Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate will spend the next couple of months holding hearings on the budget request in preparation of their work on appropriations bills for government departments and agencies. The current divided government – with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate, but with Republicans in the majority in the House of Representatives – and escalating partisan rhetoric on the debt ceiling raises questions about whether the political parties can navigate their way to an agreement before the current funding law expires on September 30. One thing is clear, the President’s budget priorities stand in stark contrast with the emerging House Republican agenda, and the final FY 2024 appropriations law will vary significantly from President Biden’s request.

The following summary, based on a review of the budget request and accompanying Fact Sheet and Analytical Perspectives, provides highlights from each section of the President’s budget proposal. Please reach out to the Crowell Government Affairs Group for more detail in any given area.

Continue Reading President Biden Outlines White House Priorities in FY 2024 Budget Request

The Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration has issued final standards for the installation, operation, and maintenance of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations paid for with federal funds pursuant to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and other federal authorities. The standards, which go into effect on March 30, 2023, regulate the types of chargers that may be installed, as well as payment processing, labor, cybersecurity, and data privacy practices for EV charging infrastructure on federal highways.

The IIJA established the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program to provide $5 billion in funding to states, local governments, transportation authorities, and tribes for the acquisition and installation of EV charging infrastructure. The IIJA allows recipients of NEVI Formula Program funds to partner with private entities to operate the EV charging infrastructure, but the new rule limits how income from EV charging stations can be used.

Although the purpose of the NEVI Formula Program is to support the build out of interconnected EV charging infrastructure along federal highways that have been designated as Alternative Fuel Corridors, the standards apply to all projects that install EV charging infrastructure using Title 23 federal funds. The IIJA directed the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy and stakeholders, to issue minimum guidelines and standards concerning the installation, operation, or maintenance by qualified technicians of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; the interoperability of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; network connectivity of electric vehicle charging infrastructure; and publicly available information about locations, pricing, real-time availability, and accessibility through mapping applications.

Continue Reading DOT Releases Final Standards for Federally Funded EV Charging Stations

On February 28, 2023, the Commerce Department released the first Notice of Funding Opportunity (“First NOFO”) under the recently enacted CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS Act), P.L. 117-167.  The First NOFO seeks applications for assistance—including direct funding, loans, and loan guarantees—for projects to construct, expand, or modernize commercial semiconductor facilities.  

In addition, the Commerce Department’s CHIPS Program Office announced that it will issue two additional NOFOs this year—a second NOFO for semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment facilities in the spring of 2023, and a third NOFO for research and development facilities in the fall of 2023.

The First NOFO is focused on the fabrication of leading-edge, current-generation, and mature-node semiconductors and includes both front-end wafer fabrication and back-end assembly, testing, and packaging.  According to the CHIPS Program Office’s webinar on February 28, the Commerce Department has begun accepting statements of interest for all potential applicants.  It will begin accepting full applications on a rolling basis beginning March 31, 2023 for leading-edge manufacturing facilities, and June 26, 2023 for current-generation, mature-node, or back-end manufacturing facilities.

Continue Reading Commerce Department Opens First Round of CHIPS Act Funding for Semiconductor Manufacturers

President Biden will soon sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides $750 billion in funding and major federal policy changes impacting the U.S. energy, environment, healthcare and tax sectors. On August 7, 2022, the IRA passed the U.S. Senate by an all-Democrat 50-50 party line vote, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie and ensuring passage. On August 12, 2022, the IRA passed the U.S. House by a vote of 220 to 207. The President’s signature, will make the bill law, and allow President Biden, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to claim a major victory while making progress on a portion of the President’s Build Back Better agenda just three months before the mid-term elections on November 8, 2022.

The Crowell and Moring LLP and Crowell & Moring International (CMI) teams have put together this Client Alert with two main purposes. The first is to provide a summary of the highlights of the bill, which is included in Section I, and the second is to provide a more detailed section-by-section review of the bill, which is provided in Section II.

Continue Reading President Biden To Sign New Inflation Reduction Act

Last week, the United States Congress passed the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 (CHIPS Act)[1] to bolster domestic semiconductor and microchip manufacturing in the United States. The bipartisan legislation will facilitate federal investments in the form of grants, loans, and loan guarantees to eligible entities and create significant business opportunities for companies in the U.S. The legislation also provides funding and new programs to boost advanced workforce training and research and development in a range of scientific and technology areas. The legislation now awaits the signature of President Biden, who hailed its passage as “exactly what we need to be doing to grow our economy right now.”

The legislation seeks to reverse the decades-long decline in U.S. microchip and semiconductor manufacturing and counter the rise of China as a source for technologically advanced manufacturing processes and products. By boosting domestic manufacturing and supply chains, the legislation also aims to relieve the global semiconductor shortage that has plagued manufacturers of a diverse set of products – everything from automobiles to children’s toys – and has contributed to the nation’s supply chain woes for more than two years.

The cornerstone of the legislation is $52 billion that will be allocated to the U.S. Department of Commerce semiconductor initiative to develop and expand domestic manufacturing capacity. Implementation of that program was already underway at the Department of Commerce[2], following Congressional authorization in the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (FY21 NDAA), and the legislation passed last week now provides the critical funding needed to commence direct federal incentives for the construction, expansion, or modernization of semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

Continue Reading The CHIPS Are Down and Incentives Flow as Congress Attempts to Vitalize the U.S. Semiconductor Industry

In an effort to boost the domestic mining industry for critical minerals, on March 31, 2022, President Biden issued Presidential Determination 2022-11, the Memorandum on Presidential Determination Pursuant to Section 303 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (“Presidential Determination”).  The Presidential Determination states that sustainable and responsible domestic mining, beneficiation, and…

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“Infrastructure Act”)[1] signed by President Biden on November 15, 2021 includes funding for research and development of critical minerals mining, recycling, and reclamation and permits loan guarantees for domestic critical minerals supply projects in an effort to eliminate U.S. reliance on critical minerals sources susceptible to supply disruptions. …

At an event in Pittsburgh, PA, yesterday, President Biden unveiled his plans for creating jobs and growing the economy by investing more than $2 trillion in infrastructure, improving access to childcare and educational opportunities, and reforming the corporate tax system. Dubbed the American Jobs Plan, the proposal fulfills a number of campaign promises and incorporates many of the legislative proposals for transforming the power generation and transportation sectors, improving racial equity and economic opportunity for all Americans, and strengthening the country’s labor force and communities that have passed the Democratic led House of Representatives over the past two years. …
Continue Reading Biden First 100 Days Update: The Biden Infrastructure and Jobs Plan: Highlights of $2 Trillion Proposal That Would Remake Transportation and Energy Sectors, Address Inequality, and Increase Taxes on Corporations

On April 7, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a notice in the Federal Register requesting comments on federal procurement guidelines that designate products that are or can be produced with “recovered materials” and set forth recommended practices for purchasing such items. Recovered materials are those waste materials that have been recovered or…