Debt ceiling fight jeopardizes $114M earmarked for Pittsburgh region
WASHINGTON — Five airports got nearly $13 million to build runways and upgrade facilities. Health care providers received almost $12 million for a dozen projects that provide behavioral health treatment, serve veterans and aid neglected communities. Another $6.6 million will go to improve seven water and sewer systems.
Those projects were among a total of nearly $53 million in earmarks inserted into a government funding package by Pittsburghlawmakers and advanced by the U.S. House last month. The Senate is now considering an additional $62.5 million to projects in the region, including $22.5 million to finish upgrades to an aging and cracking lock-and-dam project along the Ohio River.
Much of the recent focus on Capitol Hill has, understandably, been on separate spending packages: two infrastructure bills that could dole out as much as $4.5 trillion. Those bills would amount to unprecedented capital investments to bring the country’s roads, rails, waterways, power grid and other infrastructure into the 21st century.
But the basic funding of the federal government is carried out in annual appropriations legislation that will get a spotlight when lawmakers return in midSeptember from a lengthy recess. President Joe Biden has requested $1.5 trillion to operate agencies in the next fiscal year, an 8% increase from current levels.
The attention will shift to appropriations as the federal fiscal year is slated for Sept. 30, meaning lawmakers will have to pass some sort of funding extension before that date.
More spending, more debt
But a clash over raising the debt ceiling could complicate talks and bring federal finances and global markets close to catastrophe.
Lawmakers have raised the debt ceiling, a cap set by Congress on the country’s ability to borrow money to finance operations, nearly 80 times in past decades to authorize higher government spending.
Republicans— outraged by Democrats’ increased spending to agencies to combat climate change, bolster social services and other priorities —have said they will refuse to supportraising the limit.
Without a hike, the U.S. government would be legally unable to borrow more money to operate, resulting in a temporary default on its financial obligations.
“An actual default would roil global financial markets and create chaos, since both domestic and international markets depend on the relative economic and political stability of U.S. debt instruments and the U.S. economy,” according to the Center for a Responsible FederalBudget.
U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, voted against the Democrats’ spendingbills last month.
“Instead of working to craft bipartisan, commonsense bills to fund the federal government, Democrats again chose to play politics and push through unrealistic increase. and reckless funding measures that have no chance of becoming law,” Mr. Reschenthaler said in a July 29statement after the vote.
Mr. Reschenthaler said recently he was still assessing whether he supported raising the debt limit. He would be “adamantlyopposed” to doing so if Democrats “continue to pursue trillions of dollars of newspending,” he said. The first debt limit, set in 1917, was $11.5 billion, and lawmakers have approved 78 increases throughout history, including three increases during former President Donald Trump’s administration. This month, 47 GOP senators signed a letter expressing their opposition to another
Another shutdown?
Democrats, needing at least 60 votes in the Senate to raise the debt limit, are hoping that enough Republicans will come under pressure from all sides and eventually jointhem.
“When we’re talking about what debt we’re dealing with here, most of it — 99% of it, I believe — existed before President Biden took office,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters this month.
“Certainly, we know the private sector [and] leaders from both sides of the aisle are eager to see Congress raise the debt limit and not face default,” Ms. Psaki said.
The federal budget process has been contentious in recent years, with lawmakers often passing short-term extensions from Sept. 30 until the end of the year to buy moretime.
At the end of 2018, the government endured a 35-day shutdown — the longest in history — amid a standoff between Mr. Trump and Congress over some $5 billion in funding for a border wall with Mexico. More than 2,000 government employees in Pennsylvania filed for unemploymentbenefits.
Congress began drafting appropriations bills in June, with committees tackling different agencies’ funding requests.
Last month, the House voted 219-208 to approve a package of seven bills totaling $600 billion, which would increase budgets at the departments of Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Transportationand more.
Vying for money
The fight over government borrowing and spending could jeopardize hundreds of earmarks members of Congress tacked onto those bills. Lawmakers this year brought back earmarks, under the term “community project funding,” after a decadelong ban.
Western Pennsylvania’s six House members added 52 earmarks totaling $52.6 million. U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, DForest Hills, the longest-serving member from Pennsylvania, tallied the most, with $12.3 million for 10 projects.
Mr. Reschenthaler got the second-most earmarks, securing $10 million for nine projects.
Still, he voted against the appropriations bills, citing his opposition to the broader increase in government spending.
“The bad parts for me in the last budget far exceeded any gains we got through the community funding projects,” Mr. Reschenthaler said inan interview recently.
“I’m proud of the nine projects I got funded in that budget;I’m not minimizing that,” Mr. Reschenthaler said. “However, in that budget, there was a lot that would simply hold the American economy back. … The spending level is way too high whenwe’re facing inflation.”
Now with the spending bills in the Senate, the Pittsburgh region could see funding for as many as 31 additional projects totaling $62.5 million.
That comes courtesy of Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who requested his own list of earmarks. Sen. Pat Toomey, RPa., has not submitted any earmarks and has opposed theidea in the past.
The bulk of Mr. Casey’s proposed funding would go to the Upper Ohio Navigation System, a century-old lockand-dam complex downriver from Downtown Pittsburgh, heannounced this month. Mr. Casey had originally requested $140 million, the total estimated cost of completing theproject over several years.
“This funding would modernize three critical lock chambers on the Ohio River, ensuring ships can reliably deliver and take cargo from Pittsburgh to the rest of the world,” Mr. Casey said in a statement after the Senate committee approved the $22.5 million for the project.
The exact timeline for the appropriations bills is unclear, but deadlines are looming.
Both chambers of Congress, reconvening together on Sept. 20, are expected to agree to a short-term extensionuntil the end of 2021.
Mr. Doyle, in a July 29 interview, said if the Senate was to eliminate earmarks passed by the House, the House would likely move to putthem back in.
“Who knows what the Senate side will do,” Mr. Doyle said in an interview on July 29.
“The requests are bipartisan — there’s as many Republican requests in there as Democratic ones — so I don’t think it’s going to take a partisan thing,” Mr. Doyle said. “I don’t think that’s going to bea problem.”