BudgetPanel's draft bill shields DHS funds

A house panel introduced a bill last week that will protect DHS from budget cuts facing other domestic agencies under the house’s budget plan.

Yahoo New reports that although the Republican majority on appropriations committee is drafting appropriations bills which would see  cuts in the budgets of  Labor, Education, Health, Housing, foreign aid, and the Environmental Protection Agency and transportation, the budgets of these agencies and programs will still be closer to that proposed by the Obama administration than the deeper cuts which members of the tea party caucus favor.

The budget drafts circulated by Representation Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky) will protect important elements in the budgets of the Pentagon and DHS. The draft budget for DHS would allow the department  to hire 1,600 new agents at Customs and Border Patrol agency, replace cuts to local and state governments, boost spending on cybersecurity, and abandon cuts to the Coast Guard.

The Pentagon, and a program that provides food assistance to pregnant women and their children, will also be exempt from budget cuts.

Earlier this year, tea party members in the Republican-controlled house drafted legislation which would force cuts on non-defense programs of more than $90 billion below the levels in a 2011 budget agreement.

Yahoo News notes that Rogers is planning to go ahead with the bills, even though the Republicans and Democrats are still $92 billion apart: Democrats put forth a plan for the day-to-day operation of the government department which totals $1.058 trillion, while the Republican budget totals $996 billion, assuming the sequestration cuts are left in place. The issue splitting Republicans and Democrats

Rogers’s bill is closer to what the Democrats want than the tea party caucus-inspired, bill, but Democrats still expressed their concerns. “The disinvestment proposed for health, education and labor programs reveal that the majority believes that poor people, kids, college students, sick people, the unemployed and the disabled should just fend for themselves,” Representative Rosa DeLauro, (D-Connecticut), told Yahoo News.

Democrats expressed their concerns last week that putting more funds into DHS and veterans’ budgets will result in more cuts into domestic programs.

Representative Nita Lowey (D-New York), the panel’s top Democrat, agreed. “The first few bills we’re dealing with are pretty close to the president’s request…. Which means not much pickings left for the rest of the bills.”

Rogers responded that he hopes that the committee can get more money to work with later.

“Obviously we are severely short on our allocation,” Rogers said. “It very well could be that during the year there could be a replacement for sequestration and/or a budget deal that would give us more.”