March 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 31

By Leslie Mozingo

ADVOCACY UPDATE

Under Republican Reign
Their sweep is cleaning House.

VERY MORNING LATELY WHEN I READ The Washington " Insider " reports I get

SHUTTERSTOCK

the same little tune in my head, " Anything you can cut I can cut better; I can
cut anything better than you. " Although instead of Annie and her gun,
I am picturing Edward and his scissorhands.
The rules package adopted by the new House majority January 5 for the 112th Congress largely adopted the 111th House's rules, but with a 33-page list of
alterations that make some important changes. Mainly, the new rules contain a " Cut-As-You-Go " provision that prohibits House consideration of a bill that
has the net effect of increasing mandatory spending within the one-year, five-year, and 10-year budget windows. If a bill increases mandatory spending
by an amount, the bill must cut other spending elsewhere by at least the same amount. CUTGO replaces
the Democrat's PAYGO rule-which required offsets
for the costs of both increases in mandatory spending and reductions in tax revenues. CUTGO bars the
use of tax increases to offset the costs of new mandatory spending and eliminates special protection for
transportation spending.
Another rule gives unprecedented authority to
Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) to
unilaterally establish spending caps for the remainder of fiscal 2011, which ends September 30. Democrats strongly opposed the rule, arguing that it will
give the Budget Chairman too much power. Under
the directive (H Res 38) passed January 25 by the
House, Chairman Ryan must set the cap at a level
that reduces non-security spending (i.e., all discretionary spending outside of defense, homeland security, and veterans programs) to 2008 levels or less for
the last seven months of the fiscal year. Conservative
Republicans are pushing for even deeper cuts, and
they would like to meet their campaign pledge to cut
$100 billion in domestic spending.
The government is currently operating under a
Continuing Resolution (CR) which provides funding
at 2010 levels through March 4. Congress must pass
another CR to fund the government for the remainder of the year or face a government shutdown. The

overall $1.055 trillion discretionary
cap set by Chairman Ryan is $74 billion below President Obama's discretionary
spending request for the year, and $40 billion
below current spending levels. Knowing many Republicans desire much deeper cuts to spending,
Chairman Ryan deemed the current cuts a down
payment toward further reductions to come later, including as part of the fiscal 2012 budget and appropriations process.
The House Appropriations Committee reiterated that intention when it adopted the separate caps
(called 302(b) allocations) for each of the 12 individual spending bills. In order to roll back spending to
FY08 levels, the House Appropriations Committee
proposed 70 cuts for an initial $58 billion in reductions to the President's FY 2011 budget requests to
be part of the upcoming CR, also calling it a down
payment on the pledge to cut $100 billion in non-defense, non-security spending. The largest cuts were
slated for Transportation-HUD, Commerce-Justice-State, Agriculture, and Financial Services, but
programs applicable to parks and recreation were
also targeted to take big hits. Those programs include the Community Development Fund (CDF),
the majority of which funds Community Development Block Grants; the Community Services Block
Grant (CSBG), which provides federal funding for
job placement and training; and the Land and Water
Conservation Fund (LWCF).
The CR was delayed in order to fi nd more reductions in order to meet the pledge of $100 billion, and
even after that, it comes to the House floor under
an open rule, giving GOP conservatives a chance
to vote for further cuts. Another component of the
GOP House rules package allows each section to
include a deficit reduction " lockbox " account into

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March 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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