Republicans unveil funding measure

ANDREW TAYLOR

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Repub­li­cans con­trol­ling the House moved Mon­day to ease a crunch in Pen­ta­gon readi­ness while lim­it­ing the pain felt by such agen­cies as the FBI and the Bor­der Patrol from the across-the-board spend­ing cuts that are just start­ing to take effect.

The effort is part of a huge spend­ing mea­sure that would fund day-to-day fed­eral oper­a­tions through Sep­tem­ber — and head off a poten­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down later this month.

The mea­sure would leave in place auto­matic cuts of 5 per­cent to domes­tic agen­cies and 7.8 per­cent to the Pen­ta­gon ordered by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama Fri­day night after months of bat­tling with Repub­li­cans over the bud­get. But the House Repub­li­cans’ leg­is­la­tion would award the Defense and Vet­er­ans Affairs depart­ments their detailed 2013 bud­gets, giv­ing those agen­cies more flex­i­bil­ity on where money is spent, while other agen­cies would be frozen at 2012 lev­els — and then bear the across-the-board cuts.

The impact of the new cuts was prov­ing slow to reach the broader pub­lic as Obama con­vened the first Cab­i­net meet­ing of his sec­ond term to dis­cuss next steps.

The Pen­ta­gon did say it would fur­lough thou­sands of mil­i­tary school teach­ers around the world and close com­mis­saries an extra day each week. And Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano said the spend­ing cuts were caus­ing delays in cus­toms lines at air­ports includ­ing Los Ange­les Inter­na­tional and O’Hare Inter­na­tional in Chicago.

Obama said he was con­tin­u­ing to seek out Repub­li­can part­ners to reach a deal to ease or head off the cuts, but there was no sign that a break­through was in the works to reverse them.

The new GOP fund­ing mea­sure is set to advance through the House on Thurs­day. It’s aimed at pre­vent­ing a gov­ern­ment shut­down when a six-month spend­ing bill passed last Sep­tem­ber runs out March 27.

The lat­est mea­sure would pro­vide a $10 bil­lion increase for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and main­te­nance efforts and a boost for vet­er­ans’ health pro­grams, but would put most the rest of the gov­ern­ment on bud­get autopi­lot. Mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Afghanistan and Iraq would be cut to $87 bil­lion — down from $115 bil­lion last year — reflect­ing ongo­ing troop with­drawals from Afghanistan.

“It is clear that this nation is fac­ing some very hard choices, and it’s up to Con­gress to pave the way for our finan­cial future,” said bill spon­sor Harold Rogers, R-Ky., chair­man of the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee. “But right now, we must act quickly and try to make the most of a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. This bill will fund essen­tial fed­eral pro­grams and ser­vices, help main­tain our national secu­rity, and take a poten­tial shut­down off the table.

Sen­ate Democ­rats want to add more detailed bud­gets for domes­tic Cab­i­net agen­cies but it’ll take GOP help to do so. The House mea­sure denies money sought by Obama and his Demo­c­ra­tic allies to imple­ment the sig­na­ture 2010 laws over­haul­ing the health care sys­tem and finan­cial regulation.

After account­ing for the across-the-board cuts, domes­tic agen­cies would face reduc­tions exceed­ing 5 per­cent when com­pared with last year. But Repub­li­cans would carve out a host of exemp­tions seek­ing to pro­tect cer­tain func­tions, includ­ing fed­eral pris­ons and fire-fighting efforts in the West, and to pro­vide new fund­ing for embassy secu­rity and mod­ern­iz­ing the U.S. nuclear arse­nal. The FBI and the Bor­der Patrol would be able to main­tain cur­rent staffing lev­els and would not have to fur­lough employees.

The leg­is­la­tion would pro­vide about $2 bil­lion more than the cur­rent level to increase secu­rity at U.S. embassies and diplo­matic mis­sions world­wide. Last Sep­tem­ber, a ter­ror­ist attack on the U.S. diplo­matic mis­sion in Beng­hazi, Libya, killed Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

A project to repair the Capi­tol Dome in Wash­ing­ton could stay on track, and NASA’s space flight bud­get would be pro­tected from the harsh­est effects of the auto­matic cuts, known in Wash­ing­ton as a sequester. An ini­tia­tive to upgrade the Coast Guard fleet would be funded as well.

The across-the-board cuts would carve $85 bil­lion in spend­ing from the government’s $3.6 tril­lion bud­get for this year, con­cen­trat­ing the cuts in the approx­i­mately $1 tril­lion allo­cated to the day-to-day agency oper­at­ing bud­gets set by Con­gress each year. Those so-called dis­cre­tionary accounts received big boosts in the first two years of Obama’s pres­i­dency when Democ­rats con­trolled Con­gress but have borne the brunt of the cuts approved as Obama and Repub­li­cans have grap­pled over the budget.

Both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans for months have warned the cuts are dra­con­ian and would slow the growth of the econ­omy and cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of jobs. The non­par­ti­san Con­gres­sional Bud­get Office, for instance, says they would slow the econ­omy by 0.6 per­cent and cost about 750,000 jobs.

Obama presided Mon­day over the first meet­ing of his new-look Cab­i­net in a sober­ing cli­mate of fis­cal belt-tightening, urg­ing humane man­age­ment of spend­ing cuts for com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies that are “going to be hurting.”

“We can man­age through it,” the pres­i­dent told reporters. Obama and mem­bers of his Cab­i­net had been warn­ing for weeks that the cuts would be painful, but the fact is they will be slow to take effect, with the first fur­loughs of gov­ern­ment work­ers not due until next month. Cuts to many pro­grams may go unno­ticed entirely.

The White House bud­get office’s 83-page seques­tra­tion order was released Fri­day evening, detail­ing the cuts to more than 1,000 sep­a­rate gov­ern­ment accounts, big and small. Cuts of 7.8 per­cent that are set to strike defense accounts include $5.2 bil­lion for con­struc­tion at Army bases. Other accounts are far smaller, like $32 mil­lion to oper­ate and main­tain the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Each agency is sup­posed to appor­tion the cuts equally to each “pro­gram, project and activ­ity” within the broader accounts, which gives agency heads some flex­i­bil­ity since it’s up to them to define what that means. And it’s not clear what recourse oth­ers would have if they dis­agreed with an agency’s choices.

“That leaves it pretty much to the admin­is­tra­tors in the agency in which that account falls to deter­mine how he’s plan­ning on apply­ing it,” said G. William Hoagland, a bud­get expert with the Bipar­ti­san Pol­icy Cen­ter. “I don’t know that anybody’s going to be held account­able if some admin­is­tra­tor defines a project the way he wants to define it.”

Posted by AP News on Mar 5 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.