WASHINGTON NEWS IN BRIEF : Impasse mires state disaster funds
Posted on Friday, June 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — Squabbling over an emergency supplemental spending bill has put $ 40 million that would be used for disaster assistance in Arkansas in jeopardy.
Arkansas’ two Democratic senators, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, were able to insert the money into the Senate bill before it passed the Senate Appropriations Committee last month.
The cost of the Senate bill is $ 212 billion, or $ 28 billion more than President Bush requested. The Arkansas disaster funds are part of $ 47 billion in domestic spending that was attached to the bill.
House action on the bill, which would fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been delayed, in part, by a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, the Blue Dog Coalition.
The bill contains $ 51 billion in new spending for veterans benefits, spending that the Blue Dogs say must be offset by either spending cuts or tax increases so it complies with the House’s PAYGO (short for pay-as-yougo ) rule.
Lincoln said the Blue Dogs ’ insistence on conforming to PAYGO has “been a huge problem” holding up the bill.
A founding member of the Blue Dogs when she was in the House, Lincoln said the supplemental spending bill was an appropriate place for the disasterassistance funds.
“These are circumstances none of our communities and none of our emergency-response folks could have predicted,” she said.
Arkansas’ Rep. Mike Ross, a co-chairman of the Blue Dogs, agrees.
But he said his group’s opposition to including the veterans provisions without offsets doesn’t threaten the disaster aid. That’s because House leaders will likely strip the bill of all domestic-spending provisions before taking it up next week.
Ross said he hoped that the money would be included in another forthcoming bill, or possibly reinserted once the Senate takes up the supplemental again.
“We’ve got some pingpong going on,” he said.
Despite the fact that he’s taken heat from Democrats for supporting Arizona’s John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman is still welcome among Senate Democrats, Lincoln said Thursday.
Lieberman shed his identity as a Democrat during his 2006 re-election but still caucuses with Democrats.
He has endorsed McCain and in recent weeks has been critical of Illinois’ Sen. Barack Obama, the apparent Democratic nominee.
While Lieberman supports McCain and has been a defender of President Bush’s policy in Iraq, “I don’t know if that’s reason to chuck him out of the caucus,” Lincoln said. “He’s with us on more issues than he’s not.”
Rep. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, on Tuesday introduced a bill designed to steer more business to companies owned by disabled veterans.
The bill would require the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs to set aside 3 percent of its contract money to purchase goods or services from companies owned by veterans who became disabled as a result of their service.
“This bill reinforces business contracting opportunities at the VA which must set an example for the rest of the Federal government,” Boozman said in a statement.
Boozman is the ranking Republican on the House Veterans Economic Opportunity Subcommittee, which plans to hold a hearing on the bill next week.
The AgriBank District Farm Council, a bank that lends to farmers and rural homeowners, on Wednesday awarded Rep. Marion Berry, a Democrat from Arkansas, its annual distinguished-service award for supporting the Farm Credit System. Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, also received the award this year.
On Tuesday, Lincoln entered into the Congressional Record a statement commemorating “National Hunger Awareness Day.”
Lincoln is co-chairman and co-founder of the Senate Hunger Caucus.
In her statement, she noted that 385, 000 Arkansans — 13. 7 percent of the state’s population — rely on federal nutrition-assistance programs to purchase groceries.
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