Update From Washington D.C. 09/23/2011
“Deficit-reduction” has quickly become the new buzzword in
Washington, especially as the newly created supercommittee has
begun the arduous task of trimming the nation’s ballooning debt.
This past week, the focus briefly shifted from the supercommittee
to the administration as President Obama unveiled a broad deficit
reduction plan, entitled Living Within Our Means and Investing in
the Future, that will reduce the debt by more than $3 trillion
over the next ten years through a combination of taxes and
spending cuts.
Most notably, the proposal would achieve savings of $1.5 trillion
by allowing the upper-income Bush tax cuts to expire and closing
corporate loopholes, $1.1 trillion from the drawdown of troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and $320 billion in cuts to Medicare and
Medicaid. One provision of concern to some counties is the
elimination of the county share of geothermal revenues. All told,
it is widely acknowledged that the president’s proposal is far
more progressive than anything that is likely to come out of
Congress, but it may prove to be a strong guide for the
supercommittee in its efforts to find $1.2 trillion in savings
before Thanksgiving.
For its part, the supercommittee has continued to examine ways to
reach their intended goals. On Tuesday, September 13, the
committee held a hearing on “The History and Drivers of our
Nation’s Debt and its Threats” in which Douglas Elmendorf, the
Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified. This was
followed by another hearing on Thursday, September 22, in which
the committee discussed options for raising revenue and
overhauling the tax code.
On the fiscal year 2012 budget front, Senate appropriators have
continued to make progress on the various spending measures for
next fiscal year. Last week, the Appropriations Committee
approved its version of the fiscal year 2012
Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) spending bill. The legislation (S
1572), cleared on a 29-1 vote, would provide $273 million for the
State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), or the same
level of funding as fiscal year 2011.
Overall, the measure would provide $52.7 billion in federal
discretionary spending – a one percent reduction below current
funding and nine percent less than President Obama’s budget
request – and would cut funding for State and local law
enforcement programs by 17 percent. In contrast, the House
Appropriations Committee-approved CJS spending legislation (HR
2596) would reduce funding for state and local law enforcement
programs by 38 percent.
It should be noted that the House CJS bill would completely
eliminate funding for SCAAP. In response, members of the
California congressional delegation have been working on plans to
restore SCAAP funding in the House bill prior to the legislation
reaching the House floor.
The Senate Appropriations Committee also recently approved the
fiscal year 2012 Labor-HHS spending bill, which includes funding
to implement the 2010 health care law. Overall, the measure
provides $742 billion in discretionary funding, $308 million less
than current levels.
In addition, the committee cleared this past week the fiscal year
2012 Transportation-HUD spending package. The measure maintains
the current level of federal spending for highway programs and
includes $2.85 billion for the Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) program. The proposed level of funding for CDBG represents
a nearly $500 million reduction from fiscal year 2011. The House
Transportation-HUD bill includes $3.5 billion for CDBG, or a $200
million increase.
In other news, Republican leaders in the House scrambled to put
together a measure to fund the government past September 30. The
bill, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR) is needed to give
legislators additional time to complete the fiscal year 2012
spending measures.
On Wednesday, September 21, the House rejected a proposal that
would have funded the federal government into mid-November and
provided $3.65 billion in disaster aid. Democrats were opposed to
a $1.5 billion cut to a government loan program to help car
companies build fuel-efficient vehicles, while a number of GOP
conservatives felt the underlying bill permitted spending at too
high a rate.
Republican leaders responded to the setback by adding an
additional $100 million to offset some of the disaster aid. The
new offset was enough to garner a few additional Republican
votes, and the legislation passed the House on Friday, September
23 by the narrowest of margins. Democratic leaders in the Senate
quickly renounced the House-passed measure, setting up a standoff
that could postpone next week’s scheduled congressional
recess.
While lawmakers struggled to reach a consensus on the CR, they
were able to find common ground on an extension of surface
transportation and aviation programs, which were set to expire
this month. SAFETEA-LU has been extended through March 2012, and
the FAA will now be funded through January 2012. These extensions
give lawmakers more time to reconcile their differences on
multi-year reauthorizations. However, Congress may be hesitant to
consider legislation of this magnitude in an election
year.
In other news, the House Natural Resources Committee’s Parks
Subcommittee held a legislative hearing on a draft proposal to
reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools (SRS) program, which expires
at the end of September. The House draft, entitled the National
Forest County Revenue, Schools and Jobs Act of 2011, is intended
to provide counties with a dependable source of revenue to
support public education and public roads. Under the bill, the
Secretary of Agriculture would be required to act as trustee to
carry out trust projects to meet an annual revenue requirement on
each unit of the National Forest System.
The SRS proposal could prove to be divisive as House Democrats
have raised concerns about new forest management provisions. The
U.S. Department of Agriculture also is concerned with the
direction of the draft, enough so that the Obama administration
is opposed to the current proposal. On the other hand, Ron
Walter, Commissioner of Chelan County (WA) and President of
NACo’s Western Interstate Region, offered his support for the
draft bill calling it “a step in the right direction.”
In the upper chamber, Senate negotiators have continued to
discuss a clean extension of SRS, coupled with an extension of
the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program, which expires in
fiscal year 2012.
In other developments, the House adopted September 22 a
short-term extension of the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) program (HR 2943), with the Senate expected to
follow suit. The extension ends on December 31, 2011, which means
that Congress will have to address the program one more time
before adjourning for the year.
On a related note, CSAC recently joined with the County Welfare
Directors Association of California in submitting testimony on
TANF reauthorization to the House Ways and Means Committee. In
the statement, the associations provided a number of specific
suggestions for reforming the program, including urging Congress
to restore state and county flexibility to tailor work and family
stabilization activities to families’ individual needs. CSAC also
supports maintaining the focus on work activities under TANF,
while recognizing that “work first” does not mean “work only.”