Rogers announces schedule for appropriations bills

By Sara Wyant

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WASHINGTON, May 11– House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky) announced detailed spending levels and a schedule for the completion of work on the 12 fiscal year 2012 Appropriations bills by September 30th. The plan includes marking up and approving each bill at both the Subcommittee and Full Committee levels in the next few months before the August recess.

The committee outlined how it intends to cut spending according to the House-passed Budget resolution, which sets a ceiling on discretionary spending of $1.019 trillion. The 2012 discretionary spending allocation for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is $17.25 billion, nearly $2.7 billion less than Congress' final FY 2011 amount.

The committee plans to increase Defense spending by $17 billion, so non-defense discretionary funding will have to be cut by about $46 billion. Labor and Health and Human Services will be hit the hardest with an $18 billion cut compared to current levels. State is to be cut by $8.6 billion and Transportation by $7.7 billion.

Chairman Rogers said that this schedule will help avoid a perilous budget situation like the one that occurred earlier this year, which caused the final FY 2011 Appropriations to be approved seven months late and prompted arduous negotiations and threats of a government shutdown. In a committee release, he said the schedule “helps pave the way for at least nine of the 12 bills to be considered on the House floor before August 5th, with the consideration of the remaining bills in September before the end of the fiscal year on September 30th.  

“I promised when I became Chairman that I would complete our Appropriations work on time and on budget, and I will do everything I can to fulfill that promise,” Chairman Rogers said. “Congress has a responsibility to the American people to complete this legislation before the end of the fiscal year so that vital programs and services can be funded adequately and sensibly. We must rebuild Americans’ confidence in the way the government spends its taxpayer dollars and avoid the uncertainty and expense often caused by past-due Appropriations bills.”

Chairman Rogers’s schedule for the consideration of 2012 Appropriations bills follows.

For the notional Appropriations Subcommittee funding limits, also known as the 302(b)s.

http://republicans.appropriations.house.gov/_files/51111FY2012SubcommitteeAllocations302bs.pdf

The allocations are subject to change until the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution is officially adopted, and until the Committee approves the final funding levels.

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