Reaction Of Sen. Patrick
Leahy To The White House Budget For Fiscal Year
2003 (Including Budget Highlights) Feb. 4, 2002
GENERAL COMMENTS OF SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY:
"This blueprint is really the tale of two budgets. The
President has properly emphasized the budget to combat
terrorism, but the domestic budget is riddled with many
opportunistic cuts, motivated by ideology and special
interests, that would hurt rural economic development, end
the program to put more cops on the street, and weaken
enforcement of clean air and clean water laws.
"I welcome the overdue acknowledgment of the security
problems that we face on the Northern Border. This budget
request is a good first effort on the part of the
Administration, but we must make sure these added
resources are focused strongly enough on the Northern
Border, where the lines are longest and the need is
greatest."
OVERVIEW
President Bush Monday sent Congress a $2.13 trillion budget
that would provide billions of dollars in new spending for two
top priorities -- the war on terrorism and homeland security –
but would squeeze much of budget for domestic programs.
The President proposes spending $2.13 trillion for the 2003
budget year, a 3.7 percent increase from this year's spending.
But that overall increase masks huge differences among
programs. Defense is projected to receive a $48 billion boost,
the biggest increase in two decades, and spending for homeland
security would nearly double to $37.7 billion.
As a result of the slumping economy and the tax cuts that
were enacted last year, the budget projects a deficit for the
current year of $106 billion, breaking a string of four
straight years of surpluses, a feat last accomplished 70 years
ago. For the 2003 budget, the President projects more tax cuts
and a deficit of $80 billion.
AGRICULTURE
The President's budget purports to include an additional
$73.5 bill for a new farm bill, but the numbers do not add up.
A large portion of the "increase" will go to restore cuts the
budget makes in existing programs:
The President pays for improvements in the farm safety
net by reducing current benefits. The budget proposes a
lowering of commodity marketing assistance loan rates,
reducing loan deficiency payments for farmers by as much
as $20 to $25 billion over 10
years;
Funding for rural development programs is cut by
more than $3.5 billion annually to cover additional
"increases;"
The budget zeros-out funding for the Global Food
for Education Initiative ($300 million annually),
sponsored by Leahy and other leaders, implementing an idea
forged by former Senators Bob Dole and George McGovern,
which helps other nations provide impoverished
schoolchildren with basic meals;
The budget would cut funding for agricultural research
programs by more than $200 million
annually;
The budget cuts in half funding for state and
private forestry initiatives.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT / LAW ENFORCEMENT
The President’s budget includes several budget cuts and
policy suggestions that would hurt state and local law
enforcement efforts. The budget would:
Eliminate the highly successful COPS Hiring and COPS
School Resource Officers Programs that were funded at $330
million this year, including $180 million for school
resource officers programs. From the inception of the COPS
program in 1995, to Oct. 16, 2001, the State of Vermont
has received a total of $22,472,003.66 in funding from all
COPS Programs, enabling local communities and the state
police to hire a total of 219 community policing officers
in Vermont.
Level-fund Leahy’s Bulletproof Vest Partnership Grant
Program at $25,444,000, even though Congress recently
authorized $50 million for FY 2003 for the successful
program that protects the lives of local and state law
enforcement officers.
Cut $10 million from the Boys and Girls Club grant
program.
Level-fund Leahy’s Rural Domestic Violence and Child
Abuse Enforcement Assistance Grants at $40 million
nationwide.
Cut $100 million from state and local law enforcement
funds by consolidating the Local Law Enforcement Block
Grant Program and the Byrne Formula Grants Program into a
new Justice Assistance Grant Program for state and local
law enforcement agencies.
Cut nearly $50 million for juvenile justice programs,
dropping from $286.4 million in 2002 to $238.3 million in
2003.
FBI / FBI REFORM
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearings last
year, to be resumed this year, revealed that the FBI needs to
update its computer systems, overhaul its internal security
systems and re-focus its attention on detecting and preventing
terrorist attacks. Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary
Committee – which has jurisdiction over the Justice Department
and the FBI – supports the increase in the FBI's budget but
noted that the increases will come with increased oversight to
make sure the money is being spent where it will be most
effective.
Leahy applauded the $400 million requested by the White
House to be spent in block grants to the states to improve the
voting process, but he said he is concerned that no additional
resources are being given to the Civil Rights Division to
enforce the voting rights or civil rights laws. He noted that,
although the budget calls for an increase of $2.8 million to
address hate crimes, the funds are directed to the Office of
Justice Programs, not to prosecutors’ offices to investigate
and prosecute those crimes.
IMMIGRATION / NORTHERN BORDER
The Northern Border provisions added by Leahy to the
anti-terrorism bill, enacted last October, authorize a
tripling of border security on the U.S.-Canada boundary.
Efforts since then to begin implementing Leahy’s Northern
Border provisions have originated in Congress and have met
resistance from the White House. The President’s new budget
plan is the first movement by the Administration toward those
goals. The budget calls for a $1.2 billion increase for INS
law enforcement efforts, from $4.1 billion in 2002 to $5.3
billion in 2003. That increase would more than double the
number of Border Patrol agents and INS inspectors. In his
budget, the President has also said that new hiring should
focus particularly on the Northern Border.
The President also proposes a $300 million increase in the
Customs budget for staffing and technology, but there is no
mention of the Northern Border or any direction to the agency
on where to deploy the new staff.
EDUCATION
In order to pay for increases in some programs, other
programs would be level-funded or face reductions.
Specifically, local communities throughout Vermont continue to
struggle to balance their own education budgets while paying
for the rising costs of special education. While the
President's budget proposal does include an increase in
special education funding, it is far less that what is needed
in order to live up to the federal government’s promise to pay
40 percent of the costs of special education.
ENVIRONMENT
In its proposed environmental budget, the Administration
offers a future of corporate-friendly cost-benefit analyses
that largely favor industry's profits over individuals' and
communities’ health.
Of special concern are the budget announcements surrounding
federal clean air programs, clean water programs, pesticide
programs and overall federal enforcement of environmental and
public health laws. For example, the EPA budget document touts
air pollution policies based on "market-based" approaches
coupled with reduced federal regulation. Yet the document
neglects to mention that the "market-based" approaches to
clean air have been successes because of --
not in spite of -- strong federal regulations called for in
the Clean Air Act.
The Administration is again seeking cuts in EPA's
environmental enforcement funding, ostensibly to send more
funds to states. Leahy believes EPA should strengthen its
partnership with states, but he said doing so while
simultaneously weakening federal enforcement is a transparent
attempt to weaken the laws that maintain clean air and
water.
Finally, despite Administration announcements that it will
focus on clean water and watershed initiatives, the decreases
or flat-funding that it seeks in national clean water
initiatives belie its statements about helping states cope
with water quality issues. With states hard-hit by the
economic downturn, they will be disappointed that their needs
for federal help with water quality funding are
ignored.
HOUSING
Despite the economic recession, the Administration seeks
deep cuts in programs that are dedicated to protecting the
most vulnerable populations. The Administration proposes to
cut $400 million from public housing, to level-fund homeless
assistance grants, and to carve out the little increase it
gave to the HOME program for homeownership activities. These
cuts would hurt states like Vermont, where the cost of
housing, and consequently the number of homeless families,
have been rising at alarming rates. These programs often mean
the difference between a night on the street and a roof
overhead for many Vermont families.
LIHEAP
The President's budget maintains the FY02 level of funding
at $1.4 billion in regular funds and $300 million in
contingency funds. But Leahy said Vermonters should be
concerned that new language in the President's proposal asks a
federal agency to make allocations "more equitable" by
adopting a new allocation formula based solely on low-income
homes' energy expenditure data. The current formula for LIHEAP
was developed to specifically recognize the severe and deadly
weather that consistently hits the Northeast and Midwest each
winter. Any change in this formula would mean that much-needed
funds traditionally sent to the Northeast and Midwest would go
to states in the South and West.
NUTRITION
The budget's net funding increase for nutrition is less
than the Senate Farm Bill ($4.4 billion net increase in the
President's budget versus $6.2 billion net increase in the
Senate Farm Bill). Unstated in the Womens, Infants and
Children (WIC) budget request are the facts that:
The FY 2002 budget understated the WIC participation
level, and the President still has not requested
supplemental funding for to ensure benefits are there for
WIC recipients.
The budget may still understate the number of eligible
WIC participants (the President cited 8 million WIC
participants in his radio address 2 weeks ago, but the
budget assumes only 7.8 million
participants).
The new budget plan would kill the low-cost WIC Farmers
Market Nutrition Program. This program, authored by Leahy,
currently helps 10,000 Vermonters who shop at 35 Vermont
farmers’ markets, supplied by 200 Vermont producers.
The budget plan would kill the low-cost Senior Farmers
Market Nutrition Program, also authored by Leahy, which
helps 1000 senior households in
Vermont.
The Food Stamp reforms proposed by the President are a
mixed bag. Although the President's budget restores food
stamps for legal immigrants, it relies on savings from cuts in
other areas that are troubling. The "simplification" proposals
will result in benefit cuts for many seniors and people with
disabilities who have high medical expenses, and the "quality
control" reforms run contrary to the reforms proposed in both
the House and Senate farm bills.
SMALL BUSINESS / COMMERCE
The President’s budget calls for the elimination of two
small business programs that have been especially useful in
Vermont: the One-Stop-Capital Shop program and the Program for
Reinvestment in Microentrepreneurs (PRIME). It also would
drastically cut the Manufacturing Extension Partnership
program from $106.5 million in 2002 to $13.5 million in 2003,
effectively gutting this program and its highly successful
outreach programs in Vermont.
TRANSPORTATION
The President calls for the break-up of Amtrak without
offering a comprehensive alternative national rail
transportation plan. The President does not restore funding to
the Federal Highway Trust Fund, which is $9 billion short this
year – deficits that will leave Vermont highway projects $32.2
million in the hole next year. And his budget cuts direct
funding for the Essential Air Service program that brings US
Airways service to the Rutland State Airport. Without this
program, air passenger service to Vermont’s second-largest
city may end.
FOREIGN OPERATIONS BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS
COMMENT from Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman, Senate Foreign
Operations Subcommittee (of the Senate Appropriations
Committee):
"For our country -- the richest and most powerful on
earth -- health and development help for the poorest of
the poor is both a moral obligation and a security
obligation. The President’s budget ignores this piece of
the anti-terrorism puzzle."
Global Health and Education. Flat-lines funding for
global health and education programs at a time when there
is broad recognition that improving health and education
in poor countries is essential to combating poverty and
the causes of terrorism and conflict. The budget provides
an increase of only $15 million for basic education
programs – a pittance of what is needed. Moreover, while
funding for HIV/AIDS is moderately increased, it is a
result of cuts in other programs for infectious diseases,
child survival maternal health, and vulnerable
children.
Family Planning. Cuts funding for both USAID and
UNFPA voluntary family planning
programs.
Development Assistance. Level-funds programs to
support agriculture, create jobs, build democracy, enhance
education, protect the environment, promote trade,
investment, and energy development as well as other
long-term programs to advance economic
growth.
Counter-drug Assistance. Increases by $106 million
funding for counter-drug programs, including $439 million
for Colombia – a $50 million increase above FY 2002. It
also provides an additional $98 million for
counter-insurgency training and equipment for the
Colombian Army, the first time that the line separating
counter-insurgency from counter-drug assistance has been
crossed in U.S. military aid to Colombia. COMMENT from
Sen. Patrick Leahy: "For the first time, the
Administration is proposing to cross the line from
counter-narcotics to counter-insurgency. Now, as a matter
of our national policy, this is no longer about stopping
drugs but about fighting the
guerrillas."
Peace Corps. Increases funding for Peace Corps from
$275 million in FY2002 to $320 million in
FY2003.
Export Assistance. Cuts export promotion programs
by $190 million (Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private
Investment Corp., Trade and Development
Agency).
Disaster and Refugee Assistance. Level-funds these
programs that assist the world’s poorest people when they
are most vulnerable.
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