Budget hogs up Congress’ attention

Published on Sun, Apr 24, 2011

The 112th Congress had a full plate to start the year.

Debates and votes were expected on energy, climate change, education, national security, immigration, trade agreements and transportation. And there was the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

But for the most part, lawmakers have been consumed with cutting the federal budget deficit – which might top $1.6 trillion this year – since convening in January.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said the focus on all things fiscal began with the November elections, when voters gave Republicans control of the House and a larger minority in the Senate.

“The overwhelming interest of citizens in this country in these budget matters … almost impelled that this would likely be the case, that we would be spending almost all the time discussing some part of spending, taxes, budget stability, debt and the future of all this,” Lugar said in a recent interview.

Freshman Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-3rd, blames the previous Congress, which failed last year to approve a budget for fiscal 2011. After a series of short-term spending extensions, legislators finally passed an appropriations bill April 14, more than six months into the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.

The 2011 budget, which spends about $3.8 trillion, “took up an awful lot of our time this year. We could have been dealing with next year’s budget, energy, tax policy,” said Stutzman, a member of the House Budget Committee.

After a two-week spring recess, Congress will reconvene in May and dive back into the fiscal fray. It must soon vote on whether to raise the $14.3 trillion national debt ceiling that the government is about to reach. Lawmakers also will be tussling over a half-dozen budget proposals for fiscal 2012, including a version approved April 15 by the House. They will battle over whether to cut spending for the military, Medicare and Social Security.

“In the meantime, some of us have a responsibility for oversight and participation in these extremely important matters of war and foreign policy,” said Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“We ought to be doing more in the Foreign Relations Committee,” he said. “For that matter, we ought to be doing more in the Agriculture Committee with regard to the growing problems of worldwide hunger and famine. This is a worldwide crisis. It is an important subject in the United States because we are the best potential producer of food for export.”

Lugar is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“There are huge events occurring all over the world in which the United States can play a very constructive influence, and it is in our interest economically and politically to do so,” Lugar said.

Other concerns

Legislation designed to relieve U.S. dependency on foreign oil should be a congressional priority, Lugar said. Stutzman agreed, noting the recent climb in gasoline prices to $4 a gallon.

“Gas prices are an issue we should deal with as quickly as possible,” he said.

But the budget deficit “certainly has the possibility” to overwhelm other legislation, said Ted Carmines, research director for the Center on Congress at Indiana University in Bloomington.

“There are things Congress has to do,” Carmines said. “Some of these come up for renewal and have to be dealt with.”

He mentioned No Child Left Behind, the education initiative begun under President George W. Bush.

President Obama has said he wants Congress to produce legislation to overhaul the schools accountability program.

Obama last week pressed Congress to come up with immigration legislation. But Michele Waslin, senior policy analyst for the non-partisan Immigration Policy Center in Washington, isn’t optimistic, saying immigration policy “has members of Congress running scared.”

“Many don’t want to address the issue comprehensively because they fear backlash from a small, but very vocal opposition to any immigration reform that isn’t just enforcement,” Waslin wrote in an email to The Journal Gazette.

And she wrote that “budgetary constraints may even put a damper on calls for increased funding for immigration enforcement.”

Budget dominates

Some non-budget bills have received attention. Lawmakers reauthorized the Federal Aviation Administration and extended expiring provisions of the terrorism surveillance program known as the Patriot Act. The House voted to repeal last year’s health care law, and it passed a bill to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from regulating the Internet.

But “so many of the things Congress has to deal with this year are tied to the budget,” Carmines said.

House rules allowed for an avalanche of amendments to the 2011 spending proposal, and so the Republican majority approved the elimination of federal funding for Planned Parenthood and National Public Radio. The Democratic Senate rejected those and other measures.

“Because of the open process, with the budget being kind of germane to everything – health care, ethanol subsidies, Planned Parenthood funding – all of those are open for discussion because of funding aspects. It’s a good process to have,” Stutzman said.

Carmines won’t be surprised if similar “policy riders” surface in negotiations on the 2012 budget.

Congressmen “might put them in as a bargaining tactic, as they did this time,” he said. “It’s always been a tactic that’s been used.”

With so much discussion in each chamber devoted to fiscal issues, Lugar has pursued other avenues – committee hearings, meetings and luncheons with other senators – to push his views on other concerns, such as his calls for Congress to debate declaring war against Libya.

Lugar said he and other senators “may be moving ahead on somewhat of a parallel course, so when time does come on the floor, we are prepared to act more decisively.”

Published in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette | Read Article