The farm lobby, higher-education advocates, veterans’ organizations and a host of other groups are pressing their cases with budget committee staffers for increased funding as Democratic lawmakers look to release their spending blueprint as early as next week.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, wants a $4 billion increase in funding for veterans’ healthcare over last year’s level. The request is likely to resonate at least somewhat this year in the wake of the Walter Reed scandal.
“If the Congress is going to send men and women into harm’s way, it’s their obligation to pay for their care,” Dennis Cullinan, the group’s legislative director, said.
Hospital groups, doctors and other recipients of payments under Medicare and Medicaid are pushing to forestall any program cuts in an environment where Congress is under intense budget pressure.
The HMOs and other insurance plans such as Blue Cross Blue Shield are particularly worried after seeing their funding targeted over the last two years.
With the gaping budget deficit, such lobbying pleas may not work this year. Arguments to spend money on new initiatives are even more difficult with the reinstatement of pay-as-you-go.
Under pay-go rules, which were adopted by the House earlier this year and embraced by several committee chairmen in the Senate, any spending increase or tax cut must be deficit-neutral. So advocacy groups are trying to convince budget staffers that their causes should be exempted from pay-go. Others are coming hat in hand with suggestions for revenue offsets.
“It’s tough right now. But we will continue our efforts to ask for an increase,” Dana Brooks, who is overseeing the lobbying for the U.S. Farm Bureau on the farm bill, said. She believes any increase in agriculture spending merits waiving the pay-go rules.
In the pay-go environment, groups worry they might be targeted in the hunt for offsets. Companies that provide services under Medicare fear they will bear the brunt of any expansion to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) when it is reauthorized this year.
“We’re very supportive of SCHIP and making some sure all the kids that are covered under it get health-insurance services. But that shouldn’t be done at the expense of Medicare beneficiaries,” said Jack Ericksen, the vice president for federal relations for the BlueCross BlueShield Association.
A budget resolution is not binding. It merely suggests rather than dictates the amounts authorizing and appropriating committees can allocate to certain broad goals and programs. But it does cap the total amount of spending and revenue legislators have to work with without running afoul of budget rules.
More and more, groups lobbying on the budget realize that the top-line spending figure is more important than how the budget committee divvies it up, argued James Horney, a budget expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“If the overall level isn’t big enough, it’s almost impossible for appropriators to make an increase,” he said.
Some budget experts predict that the budget committees will try to wield more power over policy this year by creating a “deficit-neutral reserve fund.” Used in previous years when Congress adhered to pay-go rules, the fund would provide money for spending increases — but only if legislators spend it on budget committee priorities and if they find a way to pay for it.
Yet all this assumes there will be a budget at all. On four occasions starting in 1998, Congress has failed to pass a budget resolution. Given the narrowly divided House, and especially the Senate, many lobbyists aren’t holding their breath for an agreement this year. The Republican House barely passed its version last year, though it didn’t come close to becoming law.
This week, lobbyists will also focus on the homeland-security legislation that is moving through the upper chamber. Sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the bill would implement many of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
Discover America Partnership, a group that advocates reforms to make the United States more hospitable to tourists to advance foreign-policy goals, is pushing a number of amendments to the legislation. Among them are provisions to increase the number of Customs and Border Control agents in major airports and a “registered traveler program” with biometric and background screening that would allow the registrants to speed through customs and immigrations lines at airports.
“We’re leading an aggressive effort to find things that can simultaneously strengthen security as well as fix the travel problems we’ve created these last five years,” said Geoff Freeman, the group’s executive director.
But the legislation may hinge on a provision to allow Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers the right to organize into unions. Several Senate Republicans oppose the measure and Bush has threatened to veto the legislation if it is kept. The unions, led by the American Federation of Government Employees, are fighting tooth and nail to keep it in.
