For years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has wanted to expand and modernize a poultry lab in Athens.
It appeared this year as a $155 million line item on the president’s budget request. But as Congress works this month to extend government funding into the next fiscal year, the project’s backers see little hope for it.
One big reason: The nation’s spending will remain mostly on autopilot.
In some ways, the Southeast Poultry Disease Research Laboratory is falling victim to the broken appropriations process, the derailing of what is known as “regular order.”
The project is in the House agriculture appropriations bill at this point, but not in the Senate version. Neither bill has passed its respective chamber, though, and congressional leaders plan to extend spending at the same levels for at least a few months.
That likely would doom the project this year, University of Georgia lobbyist Andrew Dill said. Even though the university is not specifically lobbying for the USDA expansion, it would provide a boost to its partnership with UGA’s poultry science department.
“Funding construction projects as they come, it’s challenging to say the least,” Dill said. “When you don’t operate in regular order, it makes it even more difficult to get those things done.”
At the same time, the Obama administration is not making the project a huge priority. It came as part of a wish list to Congress outside an existing budget deal.
The $56 billion "Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative" would be paid for in part by tax increases that stand no chance of passing, so the projects have been mostly ignored as Congress goes through the appropriations process.
And that process has sputtered in recent years.
Congress is supposed to individually consider and approve 12 bills covering all corners of the federal government. That has rarely happened, but the process has devolved into a parade of short-term “continuing resolutions” that keep the previous year’s levels the same and “omnibus” bills that jam together multiple appropriations areas.
That leaves less room for in-the-weeds legislating.
“The big thing is we’re not addressing current issues,” said Stan Collender, a former Capitol Hill staffer and federal budget expert at Qorvis Communications in Washington. “We’re basically locking in priorities from the last time we did appropriations, which is five or six years ago in most cases. …
“We’re not planning for the future. We’re not anticipating needs. We’re falling further and further behind. All we’re doing is basic maintenance on these programs.”
Collender said the breakdown stems from Congress’ hyperpartisanship and allergy to compromise.
“It’s a lot easier to vote for an omnibus or ‘CR’ than individual bills,” Collender said. “There’s less scrutiny, less chance of criticism. … This isn’t a new problem, but it’s become much, much worse.”
The poultry research laboratory is a campus of buildings that the Department of Agriculture wants to bring under one roof and upgrade. The main building was built in 1963, with a “Biosafety Level 3” facility added in 1976. As it stands, according to the USDA, there is not enough “Biosafety Level 2” laboratory space for all the scientists, so they have to take turns.
“It’s just not optimal to have people working in little buildings sprinkled around,” USDA spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays said. “We need to have something together, update the air handling, and heating and cooling, and stuff like that.”
Local leaders also would love an infusion of $155 million into the economy.
Doc Eldridge, president of the Athens Area Chamber of Commerce, said the USDA complex — which includes the Richard B. Russell Research Center — is a big economic driver for the east side of town. He is concerned about losing the research facility to another state if the upgrades don’t come through, and he would love to see the economic jolt.
“When those kind of construction projects take place, everyone around them — the local convenience stores, everybody — benefits from it,” Eldridge said.
But because the project was in the administration’s Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative, Congress set it aside — at least at first.
A carefully negotiated budget agreement late last year after the government shutdown placed caps on agency spending. Obama's budget request adhered to those but then tacked on the extra spending split between military and domestic programs.
It was paid for by a mix of spending cuts elsewhere and tax increases on the wealthy, for which the divided Congress has shown little appetite.
So when the Senate and the House drafted initial versions of the agriculture spending bill, the Athens project was nowhere to be found.
But U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican who grew up in Athens, happens to be a high-ranking member of the Appropriations Committee — and a former chairman of the agriculture section.
When the bill was being debated in committee, Kingston added an amendment setting aside $155 million for a construction account for the Agriculture Research Service, offsetting it with cuts primarily to an account devoted to rural water and waste disposal. It passed unanimously.
In the amendment “Athens” and the “Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory” go unmentioned — likely to avoid violating the House’s ban on congressionally directed earmark spending — but the amount matches the president’s request, and Kingston’s spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the money was for the Athens project.
There are no Georgians on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the project remains sidelined there. The dispute will not be solved until there is an omnibus spending measure, likely either at the end of this year or in the spring.
If it’s next year, the program’s champion will be gone. Kingston gave up his House seat for an unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate this year.
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