Budget concessions under fire

In the frantic, last-minute push to avert a government shutdown this past weekend, President Obama and congressional leaders jettisoned high-profile provisions on abortion and the environment to strike a deal funding the government for another six months. 

Other controversial measures surviving the sweeping budget deal set off intense lobbying and debate this week from environmentalists, political leaders in the nations capital and other groups.  The House is scheduled to vote Thursday on the budget pact, which would fund the government through the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year and cut $38 billion in federal spending. 

In advance of the final vote, District of Columbia officials and activists have attacked the Obama administration and lawmakers for imposing a Republican-supported ban on the city using its own tax revenue to fund abortions for poor women. 

This was a concession Democratic negotiators made to House Republicans, who sought to ban Planned Parenthood nationally from receiving any federal money and to eliminate the federal family planning program, known as Title X.

This is a huge insult, said Leah Ramsay of DC Vote, a group pushing for voting rights in Congress.  The District of Columbia is not something to be traded; its leaders are not to be treated like children.

The group joined city leaders in a boisterous Capitol Hill protest Monday that ended with the arrest of Mayor Vincent Gray and other officials.  But there is no sign congressional leaders or the White House will retreat. 

We saved Title X as a result, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said of the Washington, D.C. provision, and thats worth doing in my opinion. The Nevada Democrat noted the ban would remain in effect only for several months. 

Other measures have longer-lasting effects. 

The budget deal will remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species list, overturning recent federal court ruling that barred the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from taking the wolves off the protected list in Northern Rockies states. 

The regions population of gray wolves, once hunted to near-extermination, now stands at roughly 1,650 after federal reintroduction efforts in the mid-1990s. 

Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, a top Republican appropriator, and Montana Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat facing re-election next year, pushed the measure, which would turn wolf management over to the states. 

Environmentalists fear that could lead to dramatic reductions in the wolf population as states open the door to hunting to protect other wildlife and livestock. 

Wolves are close to being fully recovered, but they are not there yet, said Andrew Wetzler, director of Land and Wildlife Programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.  Congress decided to throw wolves under the bus for short-term political considerations.

His group has urged its 1.5 million members to send write to Congress to protest the decision. 

Tester, a third-generation cattle rancher, said his states wolf population is out of balance.

By untying the hands of the Montana biologists who know how to keep the proper balance, we will restore healthy wildlife populations and we will protect livestock, he said. 

Environmental groups and the Obama administration scored gains in other parts of the budget deal as negotiators dropped measures to rein in the Environmental Protection Agencys authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants and mercury from cement kilns. 

In another win for the White House, congressional negotiators eliminated funding for a backup engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet, despite intense lobbying by General Electric.  GE is working with Rolls-Royce to develop the second engine, which Obama has said is unneeded. 

Pratt & Whitney, the firm building the primary engine, hailed the decision to end the $465 million-a-year second engine as a vote of confidence.

For their part, GE officials say they will turn their attention to restoring money for the program in next years budget.  Work on that gets under way this week when the full House begins debating a Republican blueprint on 2012 spending. 

Were going to fight like hell in the 2012 budget, GE spokesman Rick Kennedy said.