A reallocation of $1.2 billion in fiscal 2001 transportation funds by the House Appropriations Committee has helped clear the way for a House vote on the stalled Agriculture and Legislative Branch appropriations bills, along with an emerging deal on the controversial Cuba sanctions provision in the Agriculture spending bill.
At Tuesday's Appropriations Committee markup of the $21.7 billion FY2001 Energy and Water spending bill, the panel also divvied up the $1.25 billion in budgetary scoring adjustments to the mass transit account among the subcommittees as follows: $113 million to Legislative Branch, $172 million to Agriculture, $300 million to VA-HUD, $500 million to Labor-HHS and $169 million to Treasury-Postal, which has yet to mark up its FY2001 bill.
The additional $113 million for the Legislative Branch spending bill will be used to reverse widely criticized cuts for the Capitol Police, Government Printing Office and Architect of the Capitol, among other accounts.
The extra $172 million reallocated to the Agriculture appropriations bill will cover the cost of two funding increases added to the bill in committee for which appropriators and GOP leaders could not find politically viable offsets-$115 million in emergency FY2000 disaster aid for apple and potato farmers and a $57 million increase in the bill's rural development account.
The extra $300 million reallocated to the VA-HUD spending bill will offset what had been emergency funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster account, while the $500 million for the Labor-HHS spending bill will pay for what had been emergency funding for public health and social services needs; House conservatives successfully struck both emergency designations from those bills on a point of order.
Also Tuesday, HUD Secretary Cuomo spoke out against the FY2001 VA-HUD spending bill headed for a final House vote later today, saying it fails to address what he called "the highest need for affordable housing in the history of the nation, period."
Cuomo said "the strong economy is driving up rents all across the nation, and middle-income Americans, lower-income Americans, cannot afford the rents."
Cuomo was joined by House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who charged Republicans are cutting housing and other discretionary accounts to pay for "reckless tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans on the backs of families most in need."