What with fighting the war in Iraq, ponying up pledged tsunami aid, and beefing up national security to guard against terrorist attacks, it looks like the fiscal year 2005 federal deficit will top last year’s record of $412 billion. Administration officials said not to worry, however, that they still plan to sop up half that red ink by 2009.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH) warned that lawmakers must be serious about putting “our financial house in order.” Otherwise, he predicted, “Our kids and grandkids will be overwhelmed by the cost of our inaction.”
Representative John M. Spratt Jr. (D-SC), ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, put it another way: “Having racked up three of the largest deficits in history, the Bush administration is years away from reducing the deficit by half, or by any appreciable amount.”
It’s not just the folks on the budget committees on Capitol Hill who are feeling the heat to keep spending under control. Lawmakers, wherever they sit, as well as President Bush and his cabinet members all feel the mercury rising.
Budget pressures, said Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, “will allow the Bush administration very limited margins in both foreign and domestic policy. What to do about it is one of the great challenges of our time.”
Deja vu All Over Again
The White House has said it’s pushing to cut or get rid of some 150 federal programs for fiscal year 2006. However, when reporters asked President Bush’s budget director Joshua B. Bolten for a list, he replied, “A lot of it is inter-lineated throughout the budget.”
Note: Don’t worry if you haven’t heard or seen the word “inter-lineated;” this reporter hadn’t either. Neither had the computer spell checker! One might assume that it means something like interwoven.
One thing is for certain. Some of the programs highlighted by the administration for cuts have been on the chopping block before – and have survived. Why is Congress likely to change its collective mind this go-around, you might ask? Bolten had this answer: “Stronger interest” now in saving money than in the past.
As for outright eliminating already operating federal programs? As they say in physics, “A body in motion tends to stay in motion.” That dictum might aptly be applied to politics. Once the government sets a program in motion, good luck trying to stop it!
To put it another way, killing a federal program, said Paul Light, a professor of government at New York University, is “like moving the bones in a graveyard. You don’t find out who owns them until you move them.”
Farm Reform
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would take a 9.6 percent hit in the administration’s fiscal year 2006 budget. A good chunk of this would come from reducing farm subsidies by assuming that, one, crop disasters won’t hit and/or that producers will be adequately insured and/or Congress won’t appropriate disaster aid; and two, in the words of a USDA press release, “reforms in farm support programs.”
Those reforms would include lowering the individual cap for commodity payments to $250,000, including all types of marketing loan gains; basing marketing loans on historical production; reducing crop and dairy payments by five percent requiring the dairy price-support program to cut costs; extending the Milk Income Loss Contract program for two years; and imposing a sugar marketing assessment to be paid by processors.
Such proposals had already run into a big obstacle on Capitol Hill: Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS), chairman of the Appropriations Committee and a long-time, influential member of the Agriculture Committee. Lawmakers, he noted, aren’t about to reopen the farm bill that they painstakingly hashed out in 2002 before they have to.
“Frankly,” Cochran said, “I don’t think anyone in the administration really thought Congress would go along with this.”
A Boost for Ag’s Defense…
The president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2006 would give USDA $19.4 billion for discretionary programs – down about $2.6 billion for 2005. About $1 billion in savings is from disaster funding.
Of particular interest to renderers is that there would be a $140 million increase for the Food and Agriculture Defense Initiative. That money breaks down into $37 million to strengthen the Food Emergency Response Network and the Regional Diagnostic Network so as to be able to respond quickly to food emergencies and animal diseases; $35 million for research to quickly identify pathogens, improve vaccines, and understand genetic resistance to disease; and $51 million for enhanced surveillance of pest and disease threats.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy would also get a boost of more than $7 million.
…and Biofuels
USDA Secretary Mike Johanns says he’s “a big proponent” of Uncle Sam giving preference to buying bio-based products. In fact, since he came on board, USDA published its final rule requiring such preference – when price, performance, and availability are similar.
Today, he said, agriculture products make up only two percent of transportation fuels. But some experts, he added, “foresee a time when 15 to 20 percent of those fuels will be bio-based.”
Briefly
• Getting Japan to take U.S. beef once again is No. 1 on Johanns’ list. “There will be no letting up, no slowing down in efforts to reopen Japan to exports. It is my top priority.”
• Willie Nelson Biodiesel sells fuel made from vegetable oils. Yep, it’s headed up by the 71-year-old country western singer.
• The U.S. Park Service is testing a soy-based lubricant developed by USDA scientists on elevators at the Statue of Liberty.
• Dr. Lester Crawford, who has been acting commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, seemed a shoe-in for the commissioner slot.
• “Force multipliers” may sound like something from “Star Wars,” but it’s actually what Johanns used to describe the relationship between USDA and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. His explanation: It means that both groups can do more with less.
• According to The Washington Post, a souvenir shop in New Delhi, India, has lotions, toothpaste, soap, and “medicines” made from cow urine or dung. Cows, to most people in India, are sacred.
• On the aquaculture front, international quotas and thinning sturgeon populations have hit Russian and Iranian caviar industries. U.S. producers, who make more than 10,000 pounds a year, have been pushing to help fill demand.
And large supermarket chains must now label where fish comes from as well as whether it was caught wild or farm raised. USDA figures that it will cost retailers $89 million in the first year to comply. The rule only applies to raw seafood.
April 2005 Render