Who Loses In Latest Budget Deal? EPA, NASA, The Rural Poor, Forest Fire Protection, FBI
EDIT
As there hasn’t been a big budget agreement to repeal the BCA, total government discretionary spending must remain at $1.043 trillion for FY 2013, turning the budget into something of a zero-sum game that entails difficult, sometimes painful trade-offs. What’s more, Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations took a further 1.877 percent across-the-board hit because of earlier spending on Superstorm Sandy aid and the “fiscal cliff” deal, according to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
A Congressional aide sent over a partial list of the programs that got cut further in the latest short-term budget when the Senate took up the original House-passed bill — i.e., the CR’s losers. The Senate Appropriations Committee has confirmed the following reductions:
—EPA accounts (programs and management; state and tribal assistance; Superfund clean-up): $106 million cut
—NASA: $273 million cut
—Federal Bureau of Investigation: $128 million cut*
—NOAA account that funds weather satellites: $61 million cut
—Army Corps of Engineers construction projects: $20 million cut
—Wildland fire management: $570 million cut
—Rural rental assistance for low-income families: $20.3 million cut
*UPDATE: The House’s original actually bumped up funding for the FBI by $134 million, so the Senate’s cut effectively resulted in a $6 million cut as compared to FY 2012. It’s worth remembering, though, that even those programs that were lucky enough to get a funding boost in the CR are all still subject to sequestration (except for meat inspection and tuition assistance for military service members, thanks to two Senate amendments). So even though the National Institutes of Health received $71 million more in the Senate version of the CR than it did in the original House bill, it’s still getting hit with $1.6 billion in cuts from sequestration, the Congressional aide points out.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/22/the-losers-of-the-latest-budget-deal-the-fbi-the-rural-poor-the-environment/
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