Gung-Ho for Big Cuts in Spending, Less Fond of the Ones That Hurt Back Home
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: April 6, 2011
WASHINGTON — As a candidate, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler denounced stimulus spending and, once elected, voted for a Republican budget bill that would make $61 billion in cuts to a vast array of programs this year.
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Government overspending is out of control, she said recently in the weekly Republican address, and must be stopped. But perhaps not in her home state, Washington.
There, the Port of Vancouver had been waiting for a $10 million grant, one modeled on a popular program in the stimulus bill. But the money was rescinded in the Republican spending bill, known as H.R. 1, that passed the House in February but was later defeated in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Port officials appealed to Ms. Herrera Beutler, one of 87 freshman Republicans in the House. She agreed to work on the port’s behalf to make sure it got its money before any cuts to the grant program went into effect. The outcome remains unknown.
“We were very concerned,” said Theresa Wagner, a spokeswoman for the port, which is set to use the money for a rail project. “Our rail project is incredibly important to us and is our link to additional private investment.”
Ms. Herrera Beutler, Ms. Wagner said, has been “incredibly receptive” to their concerns.
Ms. Herrera Beutler’s spokesman said the project in her district was small relative to total government spending.
“We’re talking about $10 million out of a more than $1 trillion bill,” said the spokesman, Casey Bowman. “There are likely other small cuts made in H.R. 1 that she didn’t fully agree with but she voted to cut spending over all because, as economists have said, cutting federal spending will help economic recovery.”
While scores of congressmen and women are singing an ode to spending reductions with their Republican choir in Washington, back home, the tune sometimes changes.
In town-hall-style meetings and in interviews with local news media in recent weeks, some Republican members have been backing away from the cuts made in various spending bills passed by the House. In some cases, they are trying to circumvent the very cuts they voted for.
As House Republicans continue to press Democrats this week for even bigger cuts in a bill to avert a government shutdown, it is likely that more and more members of Congress will face constituents who, while supportive of the concept of cutting federal spending, do not care much for the specifics.
Such inconsistencies, while hardly new to this Congress, are political chum for Democrats.
“You cannot vote to cut veterans’ benefits in Washington and then go pose for pictures with veterans back in the district,” said Representative Steve Israel, who runs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “There is a pattern of duplicity here, and we’re going to make sure it comes back to haunt them.”
“Pattern” may be an overstatement, but there are several examples of members’ voting for cuts that they then deplore. Representative Bobby Schilling voted against rail financing for his district in Illinois, and later said that he did so only because he knew that the Senate would not sign off on the cut.
The Republican spending bill made large cuts to the Department of Energy, "regardless of mission,” and including the National Nuclear Security Administration. Several Republicans, including Representative Michael R. Turner of Ohio, wrote to RepresentativePaul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, seeking to restore money for the agency.
“Congressman Turner voted in favor of H.R. 1 as it was the beginning of a longer conversation on how our nation is to proceed with its finances,” said his spokesman, Thomas Crosson. “In the time since, Congressman Turner has spoken with Chairman Ryan and leadership to stress the importance of N.N.S.A. funding, and its implications for our national security.”
Also potentially harmed by cuts were research centers in Illinois, which caught the attention of Representative Randy Hultgren, a Republican from that state. Mr. Hultgren visited Fermilab, which conducts research in high-energy physics, and pledged support, according to a spokesman for the lab and news media accounts. Andrew Flach, a spokesman for Mr. Hultgren, did not return numerous calls.
The Republican budget bill also called for cutting a type of popular transportation grant. Since the cut was proposed, there has been an apparent rush to get work going on projects financed by the grants to keep them from being ended by any budget-cutting deal agreed to by the two parties and the White House. Consider the case of the Memorial Bridge, which stretches over the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Me. The aging bridge, in ill repair, was set to receive $20 million in transportation grants.
But Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, and Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Representative Frank Guinta of New Hampshire — all Republicans who voted for the Republican spending-cut bill that slashed the grant program — worked to ensure that the bridge project would receive the financing, according to staff members from several of their offices.
Mark Powell, Mr. Guinta’s spokesman, said the money had been held up by the Department of Transportation, and thus fell inadvertently under the budget knife of his boss and his House colleagues.
“The bottom line is, the Memorial Bridge is going to get the repairs it needs,” he said.
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