House spending allocations clash with White House priorities
Foreign aid would see the steepest percentage cut from Bush's request, but would still get an increase over last year.
House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., Thursday unveiled fiscal 2007 spending allocations for his subcommittees that clash with President Bush's domestic spending priorities, but he might still have to rely on home-state earmarks to ensure passage of those bills despite renewed criticism of the practice.
Low-income energy subsidies are likely to be a major issue, among others, and House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, conceded Thursday that lawmakers would likely have to reconvene for a post-election lame-duck session to complete their budget work.
Estimates of a smaller fiscal 2006 deficit -- perhaps as low as $300 billion according to Congressional Budget Office figures released Thursday -- are likely to maintain the pressure on Republicans to keep spending down. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., called the Senate's $109 billion fiscal 2006 emergency supplemental it approved Thursday "dead on arrival" in his chamber.
That bill is $14.5 billion more than what Bush said is acceptable, and Lewis pledged to aid efforts to trim the cost in conference. "I don't want to bring back a bill that is subject to a veto," he said. The emergency funds do not have to fit within budget caps, but do add to the overall deficit.
With an $872.8 billion spending cap for the upcoming fiscal year, Lewis would provide 99 percent of Bush's defense spending request with a $377.4 billion allocation for the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.
The $4 billion cut from Bush's request still represents a $19 billion increase over last year, and the Pentagon is on track for another $118 billion outside of those budget caps when factoring in the supplemental and fiscal 2007 "bridge fund" for the war effort.
Lewis would cut an additional $824 million set aside for military construction and veterans' health care in the Bush budget. But he used some budgetary sleight of hand in using $500 million of the $50 billion bridge fund for war-related military construction projects proposed by the White House to bring down total cuts to $324 million.
Veterans' health programs face a $100 million cut from Bush's request, but would still see a $2.6 billion increase, or 10.2 percent, over last year to $25.4 billion.
Foreign aid would see the steepest percentage cuts from Bush's request. Lewis is proposing to cut 10.1 percent, or nearly $2.4 billion, but at $21.3 billion that is still a $600 million increase over last year.
Overall, Lewis would trim about $6.7 billion from defense, foreign aid, military construction and veterans' accounts in the Bush budget. All were slated for generous increases in order to boost funding for homeland security and, in particular, health and education programs.
"These allocations represent my best effort to fairly distribute the limited resources available," Lewis said in a statement. "They ensure that Congress will adequately fund our priorities while sparing no area of the federal budget from scrutiny, including member project funding."
Fiscal 2007 Labor-Health and Human Services spending is in line for $141.9 billion, a 0.6 percent increase of $4.1 billion from what Bush proposed.
That will enable Lewis and GOP leaders to meet moderates more than halfway to their request for $7.2 billion more in social services spending than Bush requested, which is a condition moderates have made for supporting the fiscal 2007 budget resolution.
House Republican leaders are working to bring that budget plan to the floor, probably the week after next, and those moderates' votes will be needed, although even Lewis' plan might risk some defections on that vote.
Exacerbating leadership's problems was a move to designate $1 billion in Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funds for expenditure in fiscal 2006. The money was originally set aside for fiscal 2007 in the deficit reduction law enacted last year, but was moved into this year at the behest of Northeastern Republicans.
That essentially boosted fiscal 2006 LIHEAP funds to $3.2 billion, for overall Labor-HHS spending of $142.1 billion, and reduced money available for the program next year in the Bush budget to $1.8 billion.
Thus, fiscal 2007 Labor-HHS spending actually faces an overall cut of roughly $200 million. And even with an extra $4.1 billion to spread around in fiscal 2007, it will be extremely difficult to avoid steep LIHEAP cuts unless appropriators dip into competing education and healthcare funds -- as well as local earmarks.