House Appropriations Announces Subcommittee Allocations -- June 4, 2004 -- California Capitol Hill Bulletin -- Volume 11, Bulletin 18

On Wednesday, June 2, Chairman C.W. Bill Young (FL) announced the spending allocations, or 302(b) levels, for the House Appropriations Subcommittees. The $821.4 billion appropriations allocations reflect a $2 billion decrease in non-defense discretionary spending, but are roughly $35 billion more than the FY04 funding levels. The Senate Committee has yet to announce 302(b) levels.

In making the announcement, Chairman Young stated: "In both the deeming resolution and the Budget Conference Report, the Budget Committee reduced our allocation by nearly $2 billion below the President's request. As a result, the non-defense allocations in an already tight budget are even tighter. We are fully funding our national security requirements while providing some additional resources to bolster our homeland security. The austere funding levels for the remaining subcommittees will make it challenging to move bills through the legislative process."

The Agriculture and Transportation-Treasury spending bills would lose the most under the allocations. Agriculture's spending would drop from $16.839 million in FY04 to $16.772 million. Transportation-Treasury would be hit even harder, dropping from $28.3 billion in FY04 to $25.439 billion, $275 million less than the President's request. The allocation, however, does assume that the election reform funding included in the FY04 appropriations will not be needed.

VA-HUD Appropriations, on the other hand, would increase to $92.93 billion under Young's allocations. This is $2.13 billion more than FY04 funding, and $801 million more than the President's request. Nevertheless, the increase would not be sufficient to fund the $1.2 billion in additional benefits that veterans are pushing the VA-HUD Subcommittee to provide.

The Defense Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to receive $392.1 billion, compared to the FY04 funding level of $366.4 billion. This represents about a 7 percent increase in defense appropriations. Of that figure, the appropriators plan to shift $1.2 billion to the Homeland Security budget to cover Coast Guard funding, and $450 million would go into military construction appropriations. The Interior Department also would get an increase to $19.73 billion, versus the $19.542 it received in FY04 funding; however, the total is still $256 million less than the President's budget request. Labor HHS would get a 2.4 percent increase over last year to $142.32 billion, and Commerce-Justice-State would go from $37.6 billion to $39.8 billion, a 5.9 percent increase.

For details, visit http://appropriations.house.gov .

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