More money for Pell grants and AIDS initiatives, less for base closings in House spending bill

Monday, January 29th 2007, 5:48 pm

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Pell grants for lower-income college students and efforts to combat AIDS overseas would get more money under a catchall spending bill heading to the House floor this week.

Pentagon efforts to implement a 2005 round of base closings face a big budget cut, however, and hundreds of federal accounts would have their budgets frozen at last year's levels as Democrats keep their promise to live within President Bush's tight cap on domestic agency budgets.

The massive $463.5 billion bill would wrap up long-overdue work on the 2007 budget year that began Oct. 1. Republicans wouldn't make tough choices before the election and didn't try to clean up the budget mess afterward.

It's taken weeks for Democrats to assemble the bill, and one of the last issues resolved concerned funding to build an Energy Department plant in South Carolina to convert excess plutonium into commercial nuclear fuel. The project's cost has swelled about fivefold from earlier estimates, and House lawmakers pressed to put the brakes on it.

The talks have been kept mostly secret, but some details began to emerge from aides and lobbyists as the bill was being finished. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

Most federal accounts would be frozen at 2006 levels, though there are numerous exceptions so that agencies can avoid furloughs and hiring freezes, and for a few programs favored by Democrats such as health research and education.

And politically sacrosanct programs such as medical care for veterans and active-duty military personnel eat up much of an approximately $12 billion pot scraped together by staff aides by freezing other accounts.

Among the beneficiaries is the National Institutes of Health, which would receive a $620 million budget hike, about 2 percent. The FBI, facing hiring curbs, would get a modest $200 million increase in its $6 billion budget.

The maximum Pell Grant for lower-income college students would increase by $260 to $4,310. While modest, it's the first increase since 2003.

Activists pressing for big boosts to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis overseas won a $1.3 billion increase _ to $4.5 billion. That's enough to fund the president's $225 million initiative to fight malaria and increase the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to $724 million.

Some of Bush's initiatives, such as a $5.5 billion request to implement a round of military base closures passed two years ago, absorbed deep cuts. Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England warned lawmakers last month that shortfalls for the base closing initiative "could result in postponing scheduled redeployments from overseas stations to the United States" as well as slow the Army's moves to boost overseas deployment in smaller, more nimble fighting units.

Negotiators cut $3 billion from Bush's base closing request, but may look to make up some of the shortfall in the $100 billion-plus Iraq funding bill scheduled to advanced this spring.

There's plenty of reasons for members of Congress to be unhappy, not the least of which is that thousands of pet projects for lawmakers' districts and states have been erased.

That's not to say all of the controversial projects are killed outright. Instead, powerful lawmakers who chair committees and populate the leadership rosters in both parties will shift their efforts to obtain earmarks to lobbying agency officials with letters and telephone calls.

For agencies and accounts targeted by Bush for outright cuts, a budget freeze is in fact a victory. Examples include grants to state and local law enforcement agencies and community development block grants, which Bush tried to cut.

Amtrak's federal subsidy would remain steady at $1.3 billion, about $100 million less than sought by the railroad's many advocates in the Senate. That's a lot better that the $900 million proposed by Bush or the $1.1 billion passed by the House.