Our Congress at Work?

By

John Peterson, Chair of Government Relations Committee

The House Appropriations Committee has passed just 5 of 12 spending bills.  The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed 9 of the 12 bills.  Only the Military/Veterans Bill has passed the full House by floor vote.  All 12 bills are supposed to be passed by the end of the fiscal year, September 30^th.  That will not happen again this year.

Since no more bills were sent to the President by October 1^st, there will be another Continuing Resolution (CR).  The current CR runs until 3/6/09, and then we will likely see an Omnibus spending Bill.  I also dislike Omnibus Bills.  They are so large no-one really knows what has been included in them, including those voting on them.  The recent bailout money will likely be found by rescissions in discretionary and mandatory programs, not entitlements, which is not good.

I do not want to see a CR for the full fiscal year.  This would allow OMB to dictate how the federal funding is spent, rather than Congress.  That should be the role of Congress, NOT OMB.

The President’s budget proposed $4,741,000,000 for civil works, $130,000,000 less than last year.  Even though the House had $5.333 billion and the Senate had $5.300 billion, more funding than the President proposed, they are both approximately $300,000,000 less than what was appropriated last fiscal year.  These programs provide many jobs, something needed at this time.

A comparison of funding for the NRCS conservation programs is shown below.  I am thankful that both the House and senate have major increases for some programs.  While the Farm Bill programs are important, so are the traditional NRCS programs that provide technical assistance for our nation’s farmers and ranchers.  It seems the Administration is trying to eliminate the most effective delivery system ever developed for getting conservation on the land.  This is the same approach this and many previous Administrations have taken with the Watershed Program.  Sad.

Natural Resources Conservation Service Funding (NRCS)

FY08 Appropriations ($000)

Program                                  FY06 Approp.    Pres. Budget    House Markup    Senate Markup

Conservation Operations       840,326                   794,773                   None*                866,899

Watershed & Flood Prev. Opns.  30,000              190,000                   None                   29,790

Watershed Rehabilitation              20,000                65,000                   None                  20,000

Watershed Surveys & Planning          0                      0                        None                    0

Resource Cons. & Development     51,088                0                        None                  50,730

Healthy Forest Reserve Program           2,000            0                       None                   1,986

*  The House has not completed a markup as of this time.