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Senators try to recoup $3.1 billion for BRAC
By Elana Schor
The Hill
February 9, 2007
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday moved to shorten debate on the continuing resolution (CR) that must pass next week or risk a government shutdown, but he signaled willingness to negotiate with Republicans on opening the spending measure to amendments.
Republicans are amplifying their calls for votes on several changes to the $463 billion CR, reiterating their concerns about minority rights that also have stalled a bipartisan nonbinding resolution on Iraq. Restoring $3.1 billion that was sliced from funding for the military’s base realignment and closure (BRAC) program tops the GOP’s agenda, which also includes more funding for infant AIDS treatment and payments to victims of crime.
Reid told reporters yesterday that he is discussing with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) whether to allow votes on a limited number of amendments, including some from Democrats. Yet Reid warned Republicans not to resort to obstruction.
“I would hope Republicans don’t march to the well, as they did on this Iraq thing, because this well has no bottom,” Reid said.
In the battle to restore BRAC funds, Republicans have snagged at least one Democratic ally in Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Finance Committee. Baucus joined 25 Republicans on a letter to Senate leaders sent late Wednesday that noted the BRAC cut would obstruct troop movements and hurt local economies in military communities.
“Democrats have once again robbed from military funds and spread it to other areas,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), GOP Policy Committee chairwoman, said yesterday.
Hutchison added that environmental cleanup of former military base sites also is jeopardized by the BRAC cuts in the CR, which would keep the government funded at 2006 levels from Feb. 16 to the start of the next appropriations cycle. Reid began debate on the CR yesterday by “filling the tree,” blocking Republican amendments for the time being.
The lost BRAC funds would have benefited a transition program for the Montana National Guard, but Hutchison said Baucus is not the only Democrat whose home state would be hit; bases in Virginia and Florida are also at risk. Hutchison’s plan would offset the restored funds by imposing a 0.73 percent across-the-board cut on domestic accounts, excepting veterans’ affairs.
Reid asserted that Republicans would not shy away from filibustering the CR, which several GOP senators already have threatened. But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who is proposing a new 15-day CR to allow time for full debate, tamped down such talk.
“Nobody’s going to shut down the government,” said Coburn, part of a conservative cadre that urged last year’s departing GOP leadership to halt the appropriations process and extend earlier funding levels until Democrats took control.
Democratic appropriators have said they will attach the trimmed BRAC funds to the war supplemental, a prospect that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), another leading fiscal conservative, decried on the floor as budgetary trickery.
“This is not the time to cut defense and national security spending and add them to social programs,” DeMint said late Wednesday.
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