On the surface, President Barack Obama’s budgetary jilting of the Port of Savannah expansion likely means a couple months’ delay over a disputed bureaucratic interpretation.
But the reason the snub roiled Georgia’s political scene had to do with timing – it arrived amid candidate qualifying and Vice President Joe Biden’s Atlanta visit on an unrelated fundraising adventure – and perception. The perception is all the more important considering Congress has ceded the Obama administration an extraordinary amount of decision-making power.
Blame the Bridge to Nowhere.
The proposed federally funded span from Ketchikan, Alaska, to 50-resident Gravina Island became a potent symbol of spending gone amok on “earmark” projects selected by members of Congress. It paved the way for Congress’ Republican-led ban on earmarks for the past three years.
Many Republicans privately grumble that the ban hands too much spending power to the administration, where decisions can be less transparent.
In the quest to deepen Savannah’s port to make way for bigger ships coming through an expanded Panama Canal, the power resides in the White House Office of Management and Budget.
After a meeting at OMB last year, Georgia delegation staffers came away with the notion that if they could get a yearly spending bill to designate Savannah as an “ongoing construction project,” the Army Corps of Engineers could then provide the final sign-off to get the dredging going.
Either they misread the signals or OMB changed its mind, because the administration position now is that a water resources bill is the only possible path forward. This delays the groundbreaking until the water bill becomes law – expected by the end of April, but that deadline is hardly firm – and delays big funding from the administration for another year. At least.
In the age of earmarks, Congress could take the $1.62 million the White House budget dedicates to further study of the port expansion, move it to the construction account and adjust the decimal point to $162 million.
But Republicans familiar with the appropriations process say that even though the Savannah expansion is already in the budget, increasing the amount in the account would violate their earmark ban.
Albany Democratic U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, a veteran appropriator, disagrees and says it’s worth taking the fight to the Rules Committee, because the port has bipartisan support.
“There’s always a way,” Bishop said. “But there has to be the will.”
Despite public assurances from Obama and Biden, the White House budget fueled the perception that the federal spigot may never get turned on, putting the future of the project in limbo. Gov. Nathan Deal is trying to quell any doubts by saying the state could foot the entire bill itself and maybe get federal reimbursement later.
“One of the problems that we’re having (is) in terms of business opportunities and assuring international shipping companies that our port will be deep enough and open for business 2014, 15, 16, whenever,” said U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican. “And they don’t need to be hearing rumors about Savannah’s … not going to happen from our competitors.”
The delegation’s Democrats and Republicans remain functionally united on the importance of the project, and they all joined together in a letter tweaking OMB last week. But their political colors shine through in assigning blame.
Rep. Tom Graves, a Republican from Ranger, called it “another broken promise” from Obama, while Bishop said Georgia’s GOP senators brought failure upon themselves by not playing nicer with the White House on judicial nominees.
The biggest question from the port’s exasperated backers: What’s next?
“It’s very difficult to project what next excuse they come up with, but if they do we will whittle away at that,” Graves said of the administration. “This is not going away.”
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