To Members of the NASULGC System:

Welcome to 2005!

Many of you may be wondering why we have not been in touch concerning organization and leadership of the House and Senate Appropriations committees and their respective subcommittees. The reason? Beyond naming full committee chairs, nothing has been decided yet! However, some details are finally starting to emerge.

Full Committee Chairs
Earlier this month Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) was elected chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. [Sidebar: Lewis has selected Frank Cushing as the full committee staff director. Cushing was an appropriations subcommittee clerk for many years before joining Cornerstone Government Affairs (one of The BRT's component firms) in 2003.] On the Senate-side – where strict seniority is the norm – Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) was elected as the new Appropriations Committee chair.

Subcommittee Jurisdiction
The really big news concerns subcommittee jurisdiction. According to an article in today's edition of the Wall Street Journal, the House and Senate leadership are mulling over a proposal that would make major jurisdictional changes and reduce the number of subcommittees from 13 to 11. The WSJ article described the essential elements of the proposal as follows:

1. The District of Columbia no longer would have its own dedicated funding bill.

2. Science agencies (NASA and NSF) no longer would compete directly with veterans and housing programs. This would be accomplished through dissolution of the VA-HUD subcommittee, leaving the various departments and independent agencies funded through other annual bills:

This proposal has not been adopted and is, therefore, subject to change. Thus, we don't have any information about subcommittee assignments and leadership. However, when those decisions have been made we will be certain to be back in touch.

Outlook for the F.Y. 2006 Appropriations Cycle
Release of the president's budget request is scheduled for February 7 and according to our reconnaissance, the outlook for discretionary spending on agriculture accounts appears to be bleak – once again.

As you recall, the congressional 302(b) allocation of funding to the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittees declined in both F.Y. 2004 and F.Y. 2005, relative to prior years. This was the first time in at least 25 years that the Agriculture allocation has gone down in any year, much less two years in a row.

Fortunately, due to the perseverance and team work of everyone in the NASULGC system, we were able to secure some modest spending increases for many critical CSREES accounts even in the face of this very challenging budget climate.

Unfortunately, indications from the administration are that the president may seek a freeze on overall agriculture spending for F.Y. 2006. In the case of discretionary spending alone, a freeze would be an improvement over the reductions of the past two years. However, in order to achieve a freeze in the overall agriculture budget function, the administration has indicated that they will reduce, or even zero out, the requests for any number of agriculture programs to meet their budget targets.

So, once again, we anticipate a challenging year. The good news is that your team is in place and we are anxious to once again join the battle on behalf of the Board on Agriculture Assembly of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.

Larry LaRocco, Fred Hutchison, Tim Sanders, Fred Clark, Louie Perry, Mark Rokala,
Bill Black, and Jeff Weintraub