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AJC.com > Legislature > Blog > Archives > 2007 > March > 27 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USHouse sends spending plan to Senate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia House issued a stinging rebuke to the state Senate over their budget standoff today before voting to send its midyear spending plan to the upper chamber.
House Appropriations Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans) said the Senate’s actions concerning the budget are about “politics, ambition and leverage.”
“We cannot let short-term, shortsightedness guide public policy,” Harbin told the House moments before it voted 162-0 to send the budget to the Senate. “This House has not passed an irresponsible budget. This House has passed a budget that the people of Georgia can be proud of.”
The two chambers got into a power struggle last week after Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle announced the Senate would strip House-backed projects from the plan.
The House reacted to Cagle’s announcement by yanking back the budget it had just approved, using a parliamentary technique that allowed them to ask for a vote to be reconsidered. Harbin withdrew his motion to reconsider the budget vote today and then asked the House to send the spending plan over to the Senate with a note attached: “Urgent attention required.”
Cagle issued a statement shortly after the House took action today.
“I want to commend the House for choosing the responsible course of action and moving the supplemental appropriations bill,” Cagle said. “This is positive news for the millions of Georgians who are counting on us to fund PeachCare, keep our schools operating, and provide disaster relief to several areas in our state.
“The Senate will have our version of the budget publicly available in less than 24 hours. I look forward to working closely and cooperatively with the House to resolve our different positions on state spending.”
Such budget tiffs are common late in legislative sessions, when House and Senate members stake out their positions for the biggest money battles of the session. This year the stakes are a bit higher because PeachCare and the public defender system are running out of money.
Senators say they support funding for PeachCare and public defenders, but they don’t want the midyear plan to include most other, non-emergency spending. The midyear budget for fiscal year 2007, which runs through June 30, includes $700 million in additional spending.
For instance, the House included $5 million for Gov. Sonny Perdue’s “Go Fish Georgia” fishing tourism program, nearly $6 million for several museums around the state, $1 million for the Tour de Georgia bike race, and $350,000 toward a new animal hospital at Zoo Atlanta.
In a statement Wednesday, Cagle said the Senate didn’t necessarily object to House projects. Senators just wanted to hold off funding them until next year.
The problem is that Cagle and the Senate didn’t bother telling the House or Perdue about their philosophical position on the midyear budget until the day the House approved the budget last week, only a few weeks before the end of the session.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: politics
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By Bill Kecskes
March 27, 2007 1:35 PM | Link to this
HB 94 - the mid-year Supplemental Appropriations Bill contains waste and pork. I hope the LtGov aand the Georgia Senate will honor their “fiscal conservative principles” and eliminate this waste and pork. Some obvious examples are $35,000 to Dooly County to improve the Big Pig Jig Site - $100,000 to the City of Warm Springs to improve the FDR Golf Course - $1,000,000 for a Bicycle Race that should be sponsored by corporate America not Georgia Taxpayers - how about $70,000 to the City of Rome to build Roman Arches for the Arts Center? There are millions in this pork-laden budget that have no business being there - it is not the function of Georgia government to provide every little nicety in 180 house districts and 56 senate districts.