Appropriations

Former lawmakers and administration officials would be banned from representing some foreign governments for 10 years after leaving office.

The House GOP on Wednesday advanced a 2013 spending bill with deep cuts and limitations to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The bill cuts EPA by $1.4 billion, about 17 percent, compared to current funding. The GOP points out that this brings the EPA below fiscal 1998 funding.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who hails from coal country, said he is especially proud of the measure, which was advanced from subcommittee to the full spending panel on a voice vote.

“This represents the strong concerns of this Congress over the EPA’s unprecedented effort to drive certain industries to extinction with a cocktail of burdensome regulations, questionable guidance policies, and arbitrary enforcement measures — all designed to shut down the permitting process for energy exploration and production,” he said.

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Republican appropriators voted Wednesday to place new restrictions on abortion coverage in the new insurance exchanges for consumers.

House GOP appropriators will no longer try to block the regulation requiring TV stations to disclose political ad buyers online.

On a day when House Democrats and Republicans skirmished over financial reform and environmental spending proposals, the 2013 transportation and housing spending bill passed out of the Appropriations Committee in a relatively congenial atmosphere.

The bill is set to become the seventh of 12 annual spending bills to receive a House floor vote.

The bill cuts spending by nearly $4 billion compared to current funding, with most of that coming out of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD administration costs, Section 8, Choice Neighborhoods and Sustainable Community programs all get cut.

On the other hand, Community Development Block Grants get a $400 million increase and Homeless Assistance Grants get a $100 million increase.

On transportation, the two sides also found areas to compromise and held up the bill as a contrast to the troubled highway authorization bill, which stands on the precipice of a failed House-Senate conference committee this week.

“I’d encourage my Republican colleagues to take a lesson from the Appropriations Committee where we can still get our work done and where willingness to reach bipartisan compromise is still considered a virtue, not a flaw,” Appropriations Committee ranking member Norm Dicks (R-Wash.) said at the markup.

Overall the “THUD” bill contains $51.6 billion in funding, $2 billion below Obama’s request.

Amtrak gets more money and the Federal Aviation Administration’s NextGen air traffic control modernization effort also gets an increase.

On the other hand, Capital Investment Grants are cut by $418 million and the Federal Transit Administration loses $181 million.

“[W]e tried to be balanced in our approach with this bill, but rejected new, unauthorized programs requested by the president,” said Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), the spending cardinal in charge of the bill.

House Republican appropriators on Tuesday unveiled a 2013 spending bill with deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The bill cuts the EPA by $1.4 billion, about 17 percent, compared to current funding. The GOP points out that this brings the EPA below fiscal 1998 levels.

Overall the newly revealed 2013 Interior and Environment bill has $28 billion in funding – a cut of $1.2 billion below 2012 levels.

“The bill reins in funding and out-of-control regulation at the EPA, and reduces overall spending for the third year in a row,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the spending cardinal in charge of the bill.

Republicans want to provide $180M for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, far less than the $308M proposed by Obama.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved a 2013 spending bill that fully funds President Obama’s signature financial reform law.

The 2013 Financial Services appropriations bill was approved on a party line 16 to 14 vote. Most of next year’s spending bills have received bipartisan support this year, but most Republicans voted against this bill over its funding for the Dodd-Frank reforms to Wall Street.

The measure provides the Securities and Exchange Commission with $245 million in new funds to implement the Dodd-Frank law and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with $102.7 million.

In contrast, the House's Financial Services bill, heading for a markup next week, effectively cuts SEC funding by hampering its ability to spend from a reserve fund, while the House Agriculture bill, which covers the CFTC, does not give the commission the money it needs.

The skirmishes came days before the Supreme Court is set to rule on whether Obama's signature law is constitutional

Senators voted 15-to-15 to block a ban on an NLRB ruling that would allow unions to form smaller bargaining units