Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Contrary to some claims, the omnibus appropriations bill the Senate will likely vote on soon is not “bloated” — it provides $27 billion less in discretionary funding for the current fiscal year (2011) than President Obama requested and is consistent with the severe funding cap that Senators Sessions and McCaskill proposed earlier this year.

Nearly three months into the fiscal year, Congress still has not enacted full-year appropriations for any government agency.  Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye has proposed an omnibus appropriation bill (that is, a bill that combines the 12 bills that fund all of the agencies into a single legislative vehicle) that would finally fulfill this most basic responsibility of Congress.

However, a number of Senate Republicans, including Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, are arguing that the Senate should put off final decisions about appropriations even longer.  Claiming that the proposed omnibus bill is irresponsible, they propose instead to extend the current stop-gap appropriation bill (the so-called “continuing resolution,” which freezes funding for almost all programs at 2010 levels) until February 18^th in hopes that the new Congress will enact appropriations bills more to their liking.

Such a delay would be highly undesirable.  It is extremely difficult for federal agencies to plan and implement activities for a year when they don’t know how much funding they will receive for those activities until the year is nearly half over.

And it is truly galling that many of the same members of Congress who complain that the federal government is inefficient would then make it impossible for agencies to operate efficiently by refusing to give them a budget even close to on time.

Moreover, the claim that Chairman Inouye’s proposal is bloated is simply not true.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would provide $1.107 trillion in discretionary funding for 2011, or $27 billion below the amount President Obama proposed in his budget last February (including funding for Pell Grants on the discretionary side of the budget).

The funding level in the omnibus is consistent with the discretionary funding cap for 2011 proposed earlier this year by Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO).   Every Republican senator except Pat Roberts of Kansas (who did not vote) supported the Sessions-McCaskill proposal when it was last offered in June, yet some of those same senators now oppose an omnibus that is consistent with that sharply curtailed level.  Cutting far more deeply than this, as many Republican lawmakers pledge to do if full-year appropriations for 2011 are not enacted until next year, would truly harm a vast array of high-priority programs.

Some policymakers may have legitimate reservations about enacting the omnibus bill (although complaints about earmarks are vastly overblown — whatever their merits on policy grounds, they account for less than 1 percent of the total appropriated).  But the bill is fiscally responsible.  And any legitimate reservations have to be weighed against the harm that will be done if agencies have to continue operating for several more months without a real budget for this year.

In recent weeks, the already weak safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens became substantially weaker.  For the first time since 1996 when President Clinton and Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant as part of welfare reform, no additional TANF funds are available from the federal government to help states respond to the large increases in the number of impoverished families as a result of a recession.  We’ve just issued an analysis on the topic.

The federal cut-off in recession-related help to states is due to two factors:

• Congress recently enacted legislation that will essentially end funding for fiscal year 2011 for the TANF Contingency Fund, which was specifically created in welfare reform to help states respond to increased need during hard economic times.
• Congress failed to extend the TANF Emergency Fund, which was created in the 2009 Recovery Act to create jobs and help families weather the current downturn, but which expired on September 30.

Aggravating these problems, the 17 states that have received Supplemental Grants every year since TANF was created (most of them relatively poor states) will see those grants cut by 33 percent this year, unless Congress provides additional funding to restore them to their original level.

Due to these factors, states will have an average of 15 percent less federal TANF funding in fiscal year 2011 to help low-income families with children than they had on average in each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010.  All states except one (Wyoming) will experience some reduction in federal TANF funding this fiscal year, although some states will be hit harder than others (see map).  Some 28 states will experience a funding decline of 15 percent or greater, and four of these states will be subject to a reduction of 20 percent or greater.

With the need for emergency and temporary assistance (including help finding work) at their highest levels in decades, these funding reductions will mean that very poor families will receive less assistance to cover their basic needs (South Carolina, Washington State, the District of Columbia, and Delaware have already adopted plans to cut TANF benefits).  In addition because the TANF Block grant is used to fund a broad range of services for low-income families with children more parents will go without jobs, more homeless families will go without shelter, fewer low-wage workers will receive help with child care expenses, and fewer families involved with the child welfare system will receive preventive services.

As Congress debates measures to extend Bush-era tax cuts and fund government operations for the current fiscal year before its members leave town for the holidays, we thought you might be interested in some perspective on how the federal government uses tax dollars. (For a more detailed analysis, read our Policy Basics here or listen to our podcast on the topic here).

As shown in the graph, about 20 percent of the budget goes for defense and security programs, another 20 percent goes for Social Security, 21 percent goes for the main health insurance programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program), and another six percent covers interest payments that the federal government must make on the money it has borrowed to finance past deficits.

Another 14 percent of the budget goes for safety net programs that provide assistance to individuals and families facing hardship, such as the refundable portions of the earned-income and child tax credits, which assist low- and moderate-income working families through the tax code; programs that provide cash payments to eligible individuals or households, including Supplemental Security Income for the elderly or disabled poor and unemployment insurance; various forms of in-kind assistance for low-income families and individuals, including food stamps, school meals, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance, and assistance in meeting home energy bills; and various other programs such as those that aid abused and neglected children.

The remaining 19 percent of the budget covers a multitude of public services, such as providing health care and other benefits to veterans and retirement benefits to retired federal employees, assuring food and drug safety, protecting the environment, and investing in education, scientific and medical research, and basic infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and airports. This 19 percent also includes a very small slice of the budget (about 1 percent) that goes for non-security programs that operate internationally, including programs that provide humanitarian aid.

Yesterday, Robert Greenstein appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” to discuss the deal on taxes and unemployment insurance making its way through Congress.

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On “The Last Word,” Greenstein talked about the future of the tax cuts, and which parts of the compromise are most likely to support the economic recovery:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The compromise between President Obama and Republican leaders would extend federal emergency unemployment insurance (UI) through the end of next year.

As I’ve explained, the duration of UI benefits for unemployed workers searching for jobs was sharply curtailed when the federal UI program expired at the end of November.  The map below shows the maximum number of weeks available in each state:

If Congress enacts the compromise legislation, this map will brighten considerably, and the 2 million workers who are running out of their UI benefits this month will be pulled out of limbo.

To be sure, the compromise has some deeply disturbing features.  But Congress should approve it anyway because in our opinion it is better for unemployed workers and the economy than anything Congress is likely to pass in its place.