Appropriators ask Bush to steer clear of new user fees

As President Bush prepares to submit his first budget to a Democratic-controlled Congress, the bipartisan leadership of the Appropriations committees is urging him to avoid new user fees and other proposals lawmakers have rejected in the past.

Such proposals have been mainstays of Bush's budget blueprints but give appropriators headaches because they have the effect of creating unrealistic offsets for additional spending that never materialize because lawmakers ignore them.

"As you make decisions on the president's fiscal year 2008 budget plan, we urge you to consider the budgetary realities facing Congress," the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees wrote to Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman in a letter dated last Tuesday. "Specifically, we request that the budget not include proposals ... that have the effect of lowering the discretionary spending top line while having little or no chance of being enacted into law."

While such proposals are not unique to the Bush administration, these accounting moves have become increasingly problematic as discretionary spending has gotten tighter in recent years.

In a total fiscal 2007 discretionary budget request of $872.8 billion -- about half eaten up by the Pentagon -- $6.8 billion took the form of revenues generated by hiking airline passenger security fees, increasing veterans' co-payments and enrollment fees, and fees on such items as commodities transactions and explosives. There were also various offsets within discretionary accounts that are technically within the jurisdiction of the authorizing committees, such as cuts to farm programs and student loan payments.

"As we develop next year's budget, we will consider [appropriators'] views and look forward to working with them to enact it," an OMB spokeswoman said.

The proposal to double the airline ticket fee from $2.50 to $5 per one-way trip, to pay for aviation security efforts at the Transportation Security Administration, was expected to raise $1.6 billion for that agency's budget, for example. Since it was rejected by the committees of jurisdiction, appropriators had to shift funds from other accounts to fill that gap, as part of the $34.8 billion fiscal 2007 Homeland Security bill enacted before the midterm elections.

But OMB has consistently defended the policy, saying financing improvements with user fees frees up resources for other purposes. Lawmakers have at times agreed on the merits of such proposals; the House Appropriations Committee tried to double the airline ticket fee as part of a post-Sept. 11, 2001, anti-terror supplemental package but was rebuffed by airline industry backers and lawmakers from rural states.

Lawmakers could be dealing with the user-fee issue even as they are trying to wrap up the current fiscal year's budget. With 10 of 12 fiscal 2007 spending bills left unfinished, GOP leaders are punting the remaining bills into next year, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., confirmed Monday.