CDBG transfer: Diversionary vaporware?
Not only are those whose funding would be cut by the proposed CDBG transfer and consolidation against it, they also think it will fail:
The Bush administration’s proposal to abolish the Community Development Block Grant program, replacing it and 17 other programs with a new, less well-funded block grant program administered by the Department of Commerce, faces an uphill battle in Congress, sources said yesterday.
Not only is it a proposed transfer and consolidation, it’s a 25% cut:
The proposal, unveiled two weeks ago, would [eliminate the] $ 4.7 billion CDBG program, [and replace it] and 17 other federal development programs with a $ 3.7 billion Strengthening America’s Communities Grant Program that would be administered by a yet-to-be-created agency within the Commerce Department.
The Commerce Department is over that way …
Congress funded the 18 programs that would be combined at more than $ 5 billion in the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
So far, the proposal appears little more than vaporware:
Plans for actually creating the proposed program do not appear to have advanced far.
Congress is cautious:
The heads of the Senate and House committees that have jurisdiction over the current CDBG program have yet to weigh in on the proposal. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee … wants to see more details of the plan before commenting on it, Gray said.
House Financial Services Committee chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, has not yet taken a position on the proposal, said Oxley spokeswoman Sarah Morgan. A spokesman for Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, chairman of the committee’s housing and community opportunity panel, did not return telephone calls.
But even if it goes nowhere, the proposal has political impact, moving the goalposts:
Barbara Sard, director of housing policy at the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the proposal would probably not pass Congress, at least not this year. Despite the slim chance of it being enacted, the proposal has implications for the HUD budget in general, she said.
Even if Congress rejects the proposal, which she said would in effect move CDBG from HUD to Commerce, “I am concerned about the effects of the proposal on programs that affect low-income people,” Sard said. The administration has proposed deep cuts in the HUD budget in fiscal 2006 and if CDBG remains under that department, funding levels will suffer, she said.
Might this whole proposal simply be a large diversion, a means of freezing opponents and dividing constituencies?
