My story looking at some of the budget cuts President Obama recommended and how members of Congress reacted when questioned about them is being posted on northjersey.com.
For details on the proposed cuts, and excerpts from interviews with several members of Congress representing North Jersey, click below.
Your comments and questions are also welcome.
The big picture
Obama sent Congress a budget that calls for eliminating or reducing 121 programs to save $17 billion. All the proposed cuts in this volume of the federal budget.
The Record looked at seven of those programs that over a two-year period poured $56 million into New Jersey.
Four of them are almost exclusively awarded through congressional earmarks, the others are awarded by the administration either through a formula or competitive grants. Because of the timing of the awarding of these funds, some 2009 money has not yet been announced. For those programs, the two-year analysis looked at 2007 and 2008.
For one program, the brownfields economic development grants awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, only 2007 figures are available. A department spokesman said the agency is preparing to announce 2008 and 2009 grants combined. Notably, one of the reasons Obama proposes to eliminate this program is to reduce administrative workload on HUD.
Here’s a highlights box on the programs being cut. Links in the first column take you to pages from the administration’s budget explaining what the program is and the reason given for cutting it. Links in the third column provide details from recipients, either from other public web sites or a compilation by The Record from the earmark databases compiled by Taxpayers for Common Sense.
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What members of the delegation in Congress said
Rep. Steve Rothman, D-Fair Lawn, a member of the House Appropriations Committee
About budget cuts in general
“It’s important to remember the president can recommend a budget but it’s the Congress that has the constitutional authority as well as responsibility to enact the budget. Undoubtedly we will be making changes and modificatons to his list of priorities that will reflect our priorities.
About reductions to Homeland Security funding
“It’s going to be my objective along with my New Jersey and New York colleagues to maximize the amount of money for homeland security and other public safety grants coming to our region and in particular the state of New Jersey.”
About earmarks
“One of the reasons why it’s important to retain legitimate Congressional earmarks is precisely because there are many situations where individual members of Congress understand the security and other federal funding priorities of their districts better than federal bureaucrats. So I expect to be able to continue to bring federal earmarks for public safety, and various other projects that are critically important to New Jersey.”
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Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson, a member of the Ways & Means and Homeland Security committees
About budget providing $50 million instead of $400 million Congress authorized for public safety communications “interoperability,” or ensuring that fire and police and rescue and other workers can communicate on the same network in an emergency:
“We’ve been banging away at this since 9/11 and it is inexcusable we will not give the equipment or provide the resources necessary for our first responders to communicate.”
About cutting grants to local fire companies, which were created by a bill he sponsored, from $580 million to $220 million:
“We have $3 billion [worth] of requests through the FIRE Act and we are only funding between $500 and $600 million. That’s unacceptable.”
About eliminating programs that were all or mostly earmarked:
“I would respond to that the same way I would respond to the press. You guys have a knack of putting in earmarks that have nothing to do with what the majority of earmarks deal with, and that is hospitals, places of care, social institutions. Those are critical to the communities. We have no place in the budget usually to put these things in, because the budget is more comprehensive, it’s more universal, it deals with a general problem of sorts. And then you have a formula driven, etc.
“I’m bringing money back to my district, I’m very proud of it. I’m keeping people working. So I defend the earmarks. I think they’re important. I think everyone has to go through scrutiny. I think there should be transparency with every one of those earmarks and you better be able to defend them. I put them on my web site. Take a look at them the requests we got. And this is the way we oughta do it.
“If there’s transparency, if this is an honest request, if I don’t bring money back to my district, they should get somebody else.”
About whether Congress could cut the budget:
“There are going to be a lot of cuts. There are going to be cuts dealing with the military. [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates is in front of a committee today to talk about re-establishing a new mechanism to fund certain weapons systems and not funding other weapon systems. I say put everything on the table. I’m willing to defend what I put down. I have no problems with that whatsoever.”
About Obama’s proposed cuts:
“Some of the cuts he suggested make sense. Some of them don’t make any sense. I think we’ll take a look at them one at a time. The president proposes, we dispose.”
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Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Finance Committee
About Obama’s proposed cuts:
“I think we have a different view. At the end of the day what is going to happen is we both share the goal of reducing the budget. The question is which of the priorities that we might differ with the president. That’s why we have a legislative branch versus an executive branch.
“For example, beach replenishment in New Jersey is incredibly important in terms of protecting against Northeasters, its incredibly important as it relates to the whole question of tourism and property values and therefore jobs.
“So I might disagree with the president on that view. And only the perspective of someone who represents a coastal state like New Jersey, not Illinois, would have that sense.
“And I think that in the give and take, the goal is to achieve the savings, we may just differ with the president on how you do that.”
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Rep. Scott Garrett, R-Wantage, a member of the House Budget Committee
On Obama’s budget cuts:
“I haven’t looked at all his cutbacks, so I’m not going to speak too specifically about what he did. But I’ll just say this: It’s problematic when you’re making the cutbacks to a state like New Jersey, which is a donor state anyway, meaning we’re giving more money to Washington than we ever get back in return.
“So if he’s going to start picking and choosing where he’s going to cut back from, I hope that the entire delegation, Democrats and Republicans alike, would join on and say let’s look at what he’s cutting and suggest this is probably … not where we should be making any cuts.”
On the difficulty of Congress making cuts:
“That’s one of the reasons why it’s easier probably not to make the expenditure in the first place than to try to go back and make the cuts later on. Because once you and I agree we’re going to spend on a new table here and you’ve authorized that and appropriated it, now there’s a constituency for all those six people who sit around the table, saying don’t take my table away. Then it gets a lot harder to do that.
“That’s why … many times I’ll say ‘no’ to brand new programs, ‘no’ to expansion of programs because I know this sort of discussion’s going to come down later on when someone says, ‘we’ve got to cut some place.’"
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Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-Harding, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, on the defense and energy/water subcommittees
On Obama’s budget:
“Let’s give the president some credit on the beach replenishment. One may call it an earmark but in reality for years we’ve been after the administration to recognize that the nation’s shorelines are a huge economic investment and actually the president has put in money for beach replenishment for the first time since, I think, since I’ve been a member of Congress.
“So I’m not displeased. Of course a few members of the majority have opined there isn’t enough money. But in reality I want to give the president credit of recognizing one of those economic engines that is important to New Jersey’s economy at a time when New Jersey’s economy is down in the dumps.
About cuts to homeland security programs:
“The New Jersey delegation isn’t going to be political about being selfish about New Jersey priorities. Homeland security’s pretty important. Issues of interoperability are important to the New Jersey counties regardless of whether they’re represented by Republicans or Democrats.
About budget cuts Obama proposed:
“The $17 billion in terms of weapons systems include a second engine for the joint strike fighter, [and] the raptor, the F-22, the newest and best generation of fighter jet with stealth, which is important. They [defense department officials] all recognize as we do there have been cost overruns, but as we expand our responsibiilties in Afghanistan, and the president’s said we’re going to go in there like gangbusters, we have to have the weapons systems to give us a distinct advantage over the people we’re fighting against.
About whether Congress can cut a budget:
“What you have to do is, there’s a lot of waste in the Pentagon itself. I think they’re overstaffed. Where the money needs to go is in the front lines who are supporting the troops.”
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Alena
http://grantfoundation.net
Posted by: Alena | December 28, 2009 at 12:15 AM