IP: Mission Impossible

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 14:12:28 -0400 (EDT)
> From: AIP listserver <fyi () aip org>
> To: fyi-mailing () aip org
> Subject: FYI #68 - Mission Impossible
>
> FYI
> The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News
> Number 68: April 13, 1999
>
> Mission Impossible
>
> Later this week, the House and Senate will assign appropriators
> what amounts to a mission impossible: find a way in FY 2000 to
> fund current programs, give $13 billion more to defense and
> education, and spend $10-25 billion less than this year.
>
> This assignment will come in the form of a final Budget
> Resolution, which is a spending blueprint that charts how much
> money will come in and how it will go out.  There will be much
> talk that this plan remains within the spending limits, or caps,
> that were set down in a 1997 budget deal.  There will be much
> talk about saving Social Security, preserving Medicare, and tax
> cuts.  There will not be much talk about how this plan proposes
> to make cuts in the budget category funding the National Science
> Foundation, Department of Energy general science programs, and
> NASA -- proposing to spend (under the Senate plan) less in 2009
> than what is being spent in 1999.  States Senator Joseph
> Lieberman (D-Connecticut), "the small and declining accounts in
> research and development are a direct prescription for long term
> economic decline."
>
> The House and Senate appropriations subcommittee chairs warn that
> this year is going to be impossible.  Said Senate Appropriations
> Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), hardly a liberal when it comes
> to spending, "I don't think we can live under these caps." 
> Senate Transportation Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-
> Alabama) calculates he will have about $2.2 billion less that
> what the White House wanted to spend.  Democrats predict he will
> have to zero out Amtrak, terminate the 8,500 member Coast Guard
> Reserve, cut the Coast Guard and FAA budgets by 11%, and stop the
> modernization of air traffic computer systems.  House Energy
> Appropriations Chairman Ron Packard (R-California) warns that new
> dams, environmental restoration projects, and purchase of foreign
> weapons-grade plutonium to keep it out of the wrong hands are at
> risk.  He did not say anything about DOE's science programs.
>
> The Senate Budget Committee faults the Administration, stating,
> "...the President's budget could not deliver those funding levels
> because the sum total of the President's proposed levels would
> not be possible under current law.  If enacted exactly as
> proposed in the appropriation bills, the President's
> appropriation levels would require sequesters [automatic
> reductions] across the board to reduce them to the cap levels by
> nearly 8 percent.  The [Senate]  resolution hews to the caps
> without changing current budget rules, and because of this,
> necessarily but misleading appears to be less than the
> President's levels on a functional basis."
>
> There is no one in Washington who believes that these funding
> caps are viable.  But there is no rush on either end of
> Pennsylvania Avenue to admit that the math does not add up. Both
> sides are waiting for the other to call for adjustments to the
> caps, so that political points can be made.  All are hoping that
> the economy will provide ever higher budget surpluses than were
> first projected to provide a rationale later this year for cap
> breaking.  Meanwhile, appropriations bills have to be written,
> and under the caps, floor passage of these bills will be
> problematic and avoiding vetoes will be insurmountable.  It is
> truly going to be a mission impossible, and unlike the old
> television show, it probably will not be very inspiring.
>
> ###############
> Richard M. Jones
> Public Information Division
> American Institute of Physics
> fyi () aip org
> (301) 209-3095
> ##END##########