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##########