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Budget deal: CBO analysis shows initial spending cuts less than expected

By David A. Fahrenthold,April 14, 2011

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A Washington Post analysis of the 459-page budget revealed at least 98 cases in which Congress took back unused IOUs and called it a cut.

In some instances, federal agencies said they really were about to use the money. At U.S. Customs and Border Protection, for instance, a spokesman said the loss of a $10 million IOU would delay the replacement of aging equipment. The Census Bureau lost $50 million it was planning to spend on support personnel and things such as IT infrastructure.

But in other cases, the IOUs seemed unlikely to be cashed in.

The compromise budget, for instance, takes $560 million from the Academic Competitiveness and SMART programs, which gave grants to college undergraduates.

But the programs are set to end after this school year. And
the Education Department has enough cash to cover the remaining grants. “We would not have used this money,” a spokesman said.

At the Treasury Department, Congress gave itself credit for rescinding $423 million from a program that uses forfeited assets to aid criminal investigations.

But there, too, the cut was less impressive than it sounds. Last year was a banner year for forfeited assets: The fund took in $1.2 billion after a series of financial-crime cases and found it had far more money than it could use.

At the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Air Marshal Service lost $2.4 million and the Coast Guard $13.5 million. But both already had enough money to cover expenses, a spokesman said. “There is no impact.”

Congress took back one IOU from . . . itself.

When the Capitol Visitor Center was under construction, lawmakers allotted $621 million to pay for it. The project wound up costing less than $600 million. In the compromise budget, lawmakers took back $15 million of the unused budget authority.

Spokesmen for both parties in Congress defended these moves this week, saying it was a good thing to take back authority that federal agencies might have eventually used.

“They prevent Washington bureaucrats from spending money,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner.

“Is it a taxpayer dollar? Then it counts,” said Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). He said that if the IOUs weren’t revoked, agencies could have found ways to spend the money — turning it from theoretical to real.

“I mean, is it better to just leave the money sitting there?” he said.

Staff writers Philip Rucker and Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.

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