Sen. Pat Roberts tells Chamber that bipartisanship is working on some bills

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts told a group of Wichita business people on Wednesday that some things are getting done in Washington, D.C., through bipartisan cooperation.

Roberts spoke to about 120 people at a Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce Federal Issues Forum at the Hyatt Regency Wichita.

Roberts told the group that there are some things he can’t control, such as sequestration and the delay in selecting a House speaker. But “we are trying to move as best we can on the issues that affect pocketbooks and your daily lives,” Roberts said.

He pointed to three reauthorization bills handled by the Senate Agriculture Committee, which Roberts chairs, as examples of legislation that have successfully passed through Congress and were signed into law earlier this year: mandatory price reporting on livestock, the National Forest Foundation Act and the U.S. Grain Standards Act.

Those bills “are terribly important to those that are involved in agriculture, and of course that’s such a big industry in our state,” Roberts said in an interview with The Eagle after his speech.

Passage of those bills showed that Congress can set aside its differences at times and work together, he told the group.

“You can do that, and work with the other side and say, ‘Look, we need to get something done,’ ” Roberts said in his speech.

Roberts also said that comprehensive tax reform is “just not in the cards” this session.

But, he said in the interview that he wants to continue to push for lasting bonus depreciation. Bonus depreciation allows businesses to depreciate a larger percentage of their capital equipment purchases – including airplanes – in the first year of purchase.

The National Business Aviation Association has said bonus depreciation stimulates the purchase of new aircraft.

“I’d like to make that permanent instead of extending it, extending it, extending it,” Roberts said in the interview.

This story was originally published October 14, 2015 at 7:35 PM with the headline "Sen. Pat Roberts tells Chamber that bipartisanship is working on some bills."