The Budget Dance
WJ Editorial
The Waterways Journal
21 February 2011
Every year. the president proposes a bare-bones budget for the Corps of
Engineers Civil Works program, seeking to save money by cutting funding
for construction, operations and maintenance. and dredging. Every year,
Congress responds by adding money back into the Corps budget, so the
final appropriated amount, while never enough to accomplish what is
really needed on the waterways is enough to allow the Corps to scrape
by.
The budget dance has been going on for as long as we can re-member.
Each party in the well-scripted choreography responds to its own
influences. The president listens to the Office of Management and
Budget, which, without fail, seeks to balance the budget by slashing
spending. Congress. on the other hand. because its members more closely
represent their local constituencies. is better able to see first-hand
the positive effects of a healthy water transportation system, and the
job-killing results if the system is not maintained adequately.
Performing his side of the dance to perfection last week. President
Obama submitted a proposed budget calling for $4.631 billion for the
Civil Works program. down from the administrations own request of $4.9
billion a year ago. and well below currently appropriated levels. The
proposal has OMB's cost-slashing finger-prints all over it. and is
bundled in language calling for increased revenues paid by commercial
navigation users. Readers will re-call that navigation users negotiated
with the Corps for two gars for a reasonable capital improvement plan
that would both in-crease industry contributions and streamline the
Corps construction practices. Apparently the compromise they reached
wasn't good enough for OMB, which rejected the deal late in 2010.
As the old saying goes. it takes two to tango, and now it's Congress'
turn to step forward and join the dance, restoring much-needed funding
to the Corps budget.
However. as Pittsburgh Port Director James McCarville pointed out, the
new Congress gives us reason for concern that this years dance may not
be so artful.
"The problem is that Congress is proving into uncharted territory, and
we don't know how Congress is going to operate. how
they're going to deal with projects like these. Will they be construed
to be earmarks?" he told the WJ's Carlo Salzano (Washington Waves,
February 14).
We think McCarville's fears are well-founded. Over the last two
decades. Congress has lost many of the leaders who could be relied upon
to carry the waterways banner into the budget fight. The new Congress,
for example, is the first without two waterways stalwarts, Sen.
Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), who re-tired, and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)
who died last year. It remains to be seen whether other senators will
step forward and take their roles as waterways champions.
After November's elections, the new Congress has a huge number of new
members, and a very different outlook. Many of the new members got
there with "Tea Party" support, and they may be more interested in
cutting government at all costs rather than focusing on the value of
waterways infrastructure.
As McCarville noted, the newest fad in Washington is to op-pose
"earmarks," by which a member of Congress can use his or her influence
to gain funding for a particular project. While op-posing earmarks may
sound fiscally responsible, in fact the system is one way of sorting
out congressional funding priorities. If members of Congress cant
identify and push for valuable projects in their own districts, those
decisions are left to faceless bureaucrats in agencies like OMB to
decide which projects get the needed funds. We already know OMB isn't
up to the task.
Will Congress step forward and come up with a responsible appropriation
for the Civil Works program? Or will our valuable waterways
infrastructure be doomed to a continued slow decay, made even worse by
shortfalls in critical dredging?
As McCarville said. "People fear not only a reduction in the investment
in new infrastructure, but even in the maintenance of that
infrastructure. If you're not going to maintain it, everybody knows
what happens to it. This is a tremendous resource that is at risk. It
will be a very, very difficult decade if Congress pursues the path that
it appears to be on. We're hopeful but we just don't know."