Budget

Returning Congress faces many budget issues

There will be no easing back into work for lawmakers on Capitol Hill. As Congress returns today from nearly a month-long recess, it faces a packed calendar of b...

Federal News Network Staff

September 6, 2011 7:11 am

3 min read

By Jack Moore
Federal News Radio

There will be no easing back into work for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

As Congress returns today from nearly a month-long recess, it faces a packed calendar of budget bills and at least one high-stakes vote — reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration’s funding — before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30.

Super committee’s first meeting

However, much of the attention will be on the Select Committee on Deficit Reduction — the Congressional “super committee” — which will hold its first meeting this week.

Whatever comes out of that first gathering of the 12-member committee, tasked with finding as much as $1.5 trillion in cuts to the deficit, will likely set the tone for the rest of the fall’s budget manuevering.

The committee, part of the August debt deal that was supposed to have staved off a federal default, faces a Nov. 23 deadline. If it deadlocks, then across-the-board cuts — split equally between agency and defense spending — will automatically be enacted.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who sits on the committee, told Federal News Radio in August he was “cautiously optimistic” the committee could get its work done.

However, many federal employees worry that further cuts to pay and benefits or another round of pay freezes could be part of a deficit-cutting deal.

Van Hollen said federal workers “have demonstrated that they are willing to be a part of the solution,” but that he didn’t want to see want to see the committee “scapegoat” them.

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelly, in a letter sent last week to the members of the super committee, urged them to oppose further cuts, saying “federal employees didn’t cause this (economic) crisis, and the crisis won’t be solved by cuts to federal employees.”

She said the Federal Employees Retirement System is “very much in line with private sector retirement plans.” She also warned against cutting personnel as many workers at agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, have seen workloads increase.

The appropriations season

But even without the fight this summer over raising the government’s debt limit, returning lawmakers would’ve still had full plates: The end of the month spells the end of the fiscal year.

However, most appropriations bill are still winding their way through committee markups.

Of the 12 annual spending bills that must be passed by Congress, many haven’t even had a full vote in the full House or Senate, according to the Library of Congress’ Thomas website, which contains legislative information.

They are:

Commerce/Justice/Science
Financial Services
Interior & Environment
Labor/HHS/Education
Transportation/HUD

In contrast, military and veterans appropriations saw votes in both chambers over the summer. And while most others have at least had a committee vote in the House, the intransigence between House and Senate guarantees little.

In the week ahead, the Senate is set to take up markups and subcommittee markups of appropriations bills for Agriculture, Energy and Water, and Homeland Security. The House passed its versions of those appropriations over the summer.

Also on the schedule for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is testimony from the U.S. Postal Service, attesting to the agency’s dire financial straits.

While it’s become almost commonplace to flip the calendar to Oct. 1 with no budget in sight, the down-to-the-wire wrangling over the summer has raised the stakes.

One silver lining of the debt deal is that lawmakers may find it easier to pass 2012 funding because the August debt deal included agreed-upon top-line spending numbers for the upcoming fiscal year. But lawmakers will still likely disagree over the nitty-gritty of what programs to cut to meet those top-line numbers.

FAA an early test

Sooner even than the super committee deadlines or even the appropriations bills is a looming shutdown of the FAA.

A stopgap funding measure — negotiated after a partial shutdown this summer — expires Sept. 16 unless Congress approves another reauthorization. Federal money for highway construction jobs is set to run out two weeks after that barring separate legislation, the Associated Press reports.