Republicans See Political Opportunities During Upcoming Debate On FY07 CR
By Peter Cohn
Congress Daily
February 8, 2007
Senate Republicans will try to paint Democrats as soft on defense as the chamber prepares to take up a $463.5 billion spending bill for 13 Cabinet agencies that are operating under a temporary funding measure.
Cuts in President Bush's $5.5 billion military base realignment and closure request emerged as a major topic during a closed-door luncheon held by the Senate Republican Steering Committee Wednesday. House and Senate Appropriations committee Democrats cut that request by $3 billion to free up funds for other government programs.
"The big issue as you look at it is when they take money out of the military and housing for soldiers and put it in their social programs, they're showing their hands, and that's what we need," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., chairman of the Steering panel. "I think that's one benefit of them being in the majority, is they're going to show America that they're weak on defense."
A spokesman for Majority Leader Reid noted that during spending negotiations last year, Republican leaders cut $4 billion from Bush's overall Pentagon request and shifted the money to social programs.
"Sen. DeMint is comparing apples to oranges," Reid's spokesman said. "Sen. Reid supports BRAC and will work to make up this shortfall in the future, but he joins Sen. DeMint in his disappointment that Republicans left such a terrible fiscal mess that Congress must now proceed in this fashion."
Democrats included a $1 billion increase over FY06 to get the BRAC process under way. The rest of the money will be included in the Iraq war supplemental Congress will take up over the next few months, both House Appropriations Chairman Obey and Senate Appropriations Chairman Byrd have pledged. DeMint and others criticize that plan as a "shell game" that evades budget caps by simply adding the BRAC funds to the must-pass emergency war spending bill. "It's not honest to hide spending this way," DeMint said.
DeMint said most Republicans will not try to filibuster the FY07 spending bill. "If [Reid] wants the Democrat party listed for reducing military spending at this time, I think they're starting to show their priorities. If the leader is not going to give us our amendments, then we'll just take our vote," he said.
Democrats included no new earmarks in the bill, and included language stipulating that federal agencies are not bound by earmarks in last year's spending bills. DeMint said it did not go far enough. He and five other Republicans wrote to President Bush Wednesday, urging him to prohibit agencies from honoring any earmarks pushed by influential lawmakers in committee reports or through back-channel conversations.
"We need to put a stop to committee report earmarks and we need to end the practice where a member calls up a federal agency and threatens its funding if it does not fund that member's pet project," he said.
Democrats argue they never claimed to be eliminating projects inserted by Republicans when they were in charge. Obey criticized Republicans on the House floor last week for a "newfound and sudden burst of false piety."
Republicans are also planning to make an issue of Democrats' use of budget "gimmicks" like capping payments from the Crime Victims Fund. Established during the Reagan administration, the fund accumulates criminal fines, penalties, forfeited bail bonds and other revenues paid by criminals for victims' services. Democrats freed up $1.2 billion in savings to spend on other programs in the massive bill.
"It shows a real callousness toward victims of crime," said Senate Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl of Arizona, one of the program's champions. "It's very perplexing to me why Democrats would choose this particular fund to basically steal the money from." Republicans have used a similar offset in the past, Kyl acknowledged.
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has taken particular offense at the Democrats' elimination of what they refer to as an "earmark" he sponsored as part of the Ryan White AIDS treatment law enacted last year. His spokesman said the program meets none of the existing criteria for an earmark.
Democrats included language in the FY07 spending bill preventing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from spending the authorized $30 million for grants to states for early diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in pregnant mothers.
A Byrd spokesman said the provision would amount to a $30 million cut in CDC funding, which already has early HIV/AIDS prevention programs in place. Not a single state is eligible for the funds, he said.
Coburn's spokesman said the Democrats' move was retribution for his staunch opposition to "pork" in spending bills. "If this provision is an earmark, then so is the entire Medicaid program," he said. Coburn Wednesday night filed an amendment to extend the current CR by two weeks to allow more time for debate.
