Update on House Budget Committee Action
About 1,000 people traveled to Ohio Dominican College in Columbus last Saturday for the House Budget Committee’s first field hearing. Lasting for about 2 1/2 hours, the hearing focused on “How Do We Cut the Federal Budget?”. Press reports indicate that fourteen people, selected from those completing request forms, spoke for three minutes and then answered questions from nine committee members. Another thirteen people spoke for one minute each. Reports do not indicate if science and technology programs were discussed.
The more active role the House Budget Committee is playing this year adds a layer of complexity to what is already a confusing budgeting process. In recent history, the committee has had a low profile. In the new 104th Congress, the Budget Committee will chart the over-all direction of congressional spending in this and future years.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-OH) has long been active in his pursuit of lower federal spending. In 1993, while Ranking Republican on the committee, he overcame considerable resistance among House Republicans to develop a detailed alternative budget proposal. Kasich did so again last year with an alternative budget resolution that included detailed spending cuts. Among them were a phased-in 50% reduction in magnetic fusion research funding, a freeze in DOE’s nuclear physics research program funding through FY 1999, and a limitation on the NSF budget. Last year’s budget resolution lost by 165-243 on a party-line vote. Kasich is now chairman of the committee, and has the power to formulate a budget resolution that will pass the House. What the Senate will do is unknown. Budget resolutions are not signed by the president.
It is not yet known what level of detail Kasich will specify in the forthcoming budget resolution. Historically, the resolution has only set broad spending goals by budget categories; there is concern that the committee may go further this year. Energy appropriations subcommittee chair John Myers (R-IN) has said, “The Budget Committee should not be micro-managing. We on Appropriations feel we have better insights into what the priorities should be.” Senior House Republicans have been meeting to resolve tensions between committee chairs.
On February 6, the Clinton Administration sends its Fiscal Year 1996 budget request to Congress, where it will encounter significant opposition from the very first day. Within weeks, the appropriations committees will start hearings on the request (Myers has scheduled a DOE physics-related hearing for March 9.) While all of this is going on, congressional Republicans will attempt to frame a winning strategy for reducing federal spending in the current fiscal year through program rescissions (see FYI #10), in FY 1996 appropriations, and in over-all cuts through the end of the decade. Warns House Appropriations Chairman Bob Livingston (R-LA), “if anybody thinks the cuts aren’t significant, they’re fooling themselves. We have to make some desperate decisions.”
