WASHINGTON (AP) — The historic $38 billion in budget cuts resulting from at-times hostile bargaining between Congress and the Obama White House were accomplished in large part by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.
Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite
programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and
"Race to the Top" aid for public schools, among others — from
Republican knives, according to new details of the legislation released Tuesday
morning.
And big holes in foreign aid and Environmental
Protection Agency accounts were patched in large part. Republicans also gave up
politically treacherous cuts to the Agriculture Department's food inspection
program.
The details of the agreement reached late Friday
night just ahead of a deadline for a partial government shutdown reveal a lot
of one-time savings and cuts that officially "score" as cuts to pay
for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the
deficit.
As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to
reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the
chamber approved a bill slashing this year's budget by more than $60 billion.
In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early
learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and
funding for Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative that provides grants
to better-performing schools.
Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into
law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover
federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of
highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other
legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a
program providing health care to children of lower-income families.
Still, Obama and his Democratic allies accepted $600
million in cuts to a community health centers programs, $414 million in cuts to
grants for state and local police departments, and a $1.6 billion reduction in
the Environmental Protection Agency budget, almost $1 billion of which would
come from grants for clean water and other projects by local governments and
Indian tribes.
The National Institutes of Health, which funds
critical medical research, would absorb a $260 million cut, less than 1 percent
of its budget, instead of the $1.6 billion cut sought by House Republicans.
Family planning programs would bear a 5 percent cut rather than being
completely eliminated.
Homeland security programs would have to take their
first-ever cut, though much of the 2 percent decrease comes from a $786 million
cut to first responder grants to state and local governments. The IRS would see
its budget frozen but be spared the 5 percent cut sought by House Republicans.
About $10 billion of the cuts already have been
enacted as the price for keeping the government open as negotiations
progressed; lawmakers tipped their hand regarding another $10 billion or so
when the House passed a spending bill last week that ran aground in the Senate.
For instance, the spending measure reaps $350
million by cutting a one-year program enacted in 2009 for dairy farmers then
suffering from low milk prices. Another $650 million comes by not repeating a
one-time infusion into highway programs passed that same year. And just last
Friday, Congress approved Obama's $1 billion request for high-speed rail grants
— crediting itself with $1.5 billion in savings relative to last year.
The underlying issue is long overdue legislation to
finance the day-to-day budget of every Cabinet department, including the
Pentagon, for the already half-completed 2011 fiscal year. The measure caps
2011 funding for such operating budgets at about $1.2 trillion.
About $10 billion of the cuts comes from targeting
appropriations accounts previously used by lawmakers for so-called earmarks,
those pet projects like highways, water projects, community development grants
and new equipment for police and fire departments. Republicans had already
engineered a ban on earmarks when taking back the House this year.
Republicans also claimed $5 billion in savings by
capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an
arcane bookkeeping rule — used for years by appropriators — placing a cap on
spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to
claim the entire contents of the fund as budget savings. The savings are
awarded year after year.
Even before details of the bill came out, some
conservative Republicans were assailing it. Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said he
probably won't vote for the measure, and tea party favorite Michele Bachmann,
R-Minn., is a "nay" as well.
The $38 billion in cuts, Rep. Tim Huelskamp,
R-Kan., wrote on his Facebook page, "barely make a dent" in the
country's budget woes.
Huelskamp and other conservatives are also upset
that most conservative policy "riders" added by Republicans were
dropped from the legislation in the course of the talks.
The White House rejected GOP attempts to block the
EPA's ability to issue global warming rules and other reversals of
environmental regulations. Obama also forced Republicans to drop an effort to
cut off Planned Parenthood from federal funding, as well as GOP moves to stop
implementation of Obama's overhauls of health care and Wall Street regulation.
The administration also thwarted a GOP attempt to
block new rules governing the Internet, as well as a National Rifle
Association-backed attempt to neuter a little-noticed initiative aimed at
catching people running guns to Mexican drug lords by having regulators gather
information on batch purchases of rifles and shotguns.
Anti-abortion lawmakers did, however, succeed in
winning a provision to block taxpayer-funded abortions in the District of
Columbia. And House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, won funding for a personal
initiative to provide federally funded vouchers for District of Columbia
students to attend private schools.
Instead of sharply cutting the Securities and
Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, both
agencies would get increases under the legislation as they gear up to implement
last year's overhaul of financial regulation. And renewable energy programs are
cut $407 million below last year, almost 20 percent. The Army Corps of
Engineers , which funds flood control and inland waterway projects, will absorb
a $578 million cut, representing about 10 percent of its budget.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
