Of old bull elephants, Tokyo subways, and Section 8
Today’s ever-helpful Congressional Quarterly’s online update (subscription only) breaks what may sound like the ultimate insider story:
House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis indicated he is serious about reshaping the Appropriations subcommittees, based on a proposal he gave to Senate counterpart Thad Cochran in a closed meeting on the topic Wednesday.
What, my gentle reader asks, could this conceivably have to do with housing?
Of particular concern to DeLay is a situation in which the annual VA-HUD bill includes the competing jurisdictions of the Veterans Administration, NASA — which employs many constituents in DeLay’s district near Houston — the EPA, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The reader is unimpressed. And your point is?
Sit down, my child, and let me tell you of political power, and insider hardball. If we may regard Congress as a factory, it produces two products: laws and money. Who sits atop the money fountains — excuse me, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees — is he (or she) who decides who wins and who loses.
Actually, it gets better. The Federal budget/ funding process is conducted, top-down, in rounds:
· A budget resolution sets overall spending goals and spending caps.
· Each committee works within its cap.
· At crunch time — September through completion — those still over their cap get their funding squeezed down, much like passengers on a
Meanwhile, within each committee there’s continuous jostling for relative advantage.
Housing funding comes under the ugly title “VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies” (calling it the Miscellaneous Domestic Committee would have been so demeaning). Last year’s funding broke down as follows:
Billions Percent
VA $30.3 31%
HUD 37.7 39%
NASA 15.1 16%
Environmental Protection 7.8 8%
National Science Foundation 5.5 6%
Others 0.6 1%
Total $97.0
AHI readers have already seen that the Administration is proposing taking from HUD its most popular program — CDBG, which is basically grants to localities — and giving it to Commerce. This is another initiative.
Why should we care? On a different subcommittee, HUD could be up against stronger (or weaker) competitors for funding — and with Section 8 already under pressure, if HUD were absorbed into a new committee, chair roles would change, and the newcomers might be given short shrift when it’s cost-squeezing time. A reorganization and a migration to a new and unfamiliar committee could very well be a starting point for further cutting HUD’s resources.
Asks the still-attentive reader, Does it make policy sense?
Let one who knows (and sensibly remains anonymous) answer:
“Many things make policy sense. That will not be the issue,” said a Senate GOP aide. “The issue will be the politics of who would win and who would lose.”
[A lawmaker] had confidently predicted that any Appropriations reorganization plan would “run into reality,” meaning it would run aground because of protests by the “old bulls” in the House and Senate.
In the wonderful movie Plenty, Sir Ian McKellan as a British diplomat delivers a great precis of bureaucracy (quoting from memory):
You see this building? When we were building an empire, there were a hundred of us here. Now that we are dismantling it, there are a thousand. And as we do, the fight for power among us become [pause] [closed smile] that much … keener.
How long will the elephants butt heads?
A Senate aide said the appropriations reorganization would likely be completed within a month.
