BPA rate boost called non-starter
WASHINGTON – Northwest lawmakers of both parties reacted strongly Monday against a proposal in President Bush’s budget that would raise rates for the electricity generated at the region’s federal dams.
Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, said Bush’s proposal for the Bonneville Power Administration to charge market rates rather than the true cost of generating electricity could double the region’s electric rates in the next five years.
“The administration’s attempt to pay down the national deficit on the backs of Washington state ratepayers is both misguided and wrong,” Murray said in a statement. She and Cantwell have sent Bush a letter stating their objections.
Republicans also were quick to denounce the proposal.
Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris said in a statement that the proposal “is simply the wrong approach and one that will cost jobs, cost consumers and stifle economic growth throughout our region.”
A spokesman for Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said the proposal caught his congressional staff by surprise.
Craig applauded the president’s overall budget for its “fiscal responsibility,” spokesman Dan Whiting said. But Idaho’s senior senator would not support the BPA proposal because it could “hamstring Idaho’s economy.”
“It’s a non-starter in Congress, but we want to make sure people know that this is not an option in the Northwest,” Whiting said. Craig, who sits on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, still hopes to work with the Bush administration to pass an energy bill.
Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget proposal targets 150 federal programs for cutbacks or elimination in 2006 while proposing a 4.8 percent increase in defense spending. The deficit would hit $390 billion, but the annual deficit is projected to fall to $230 billion by 2009, the administration says.
Bush proposes trimming farm subsidies by $587 million in 2006 and by $5.7 billion over the next decade. He would increase spending on the 2003 “healthy forests” law by $56 million, enough to thin an additional 4 million acres.
The projections do not take into account the military costs incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, the price of making Bush tax cuts permanent or the cost of Bush’s proposal to overhaul Social Security, which some peg at $4.5 trillion over 20 years.
Murray and Cantwell criticized $297 million in proposed cuts to the cleanup effort at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. “This budget does not give me confidence that the Department of Energy is going to keep its commitment to clean up the site,” Cantwell said in a prepared statement.
Bush’s budget also outlined major changes in health care funding, including a $45 billion cut to Medicaid and a plan to require $250 annual fees for veterans earning $25,000 or more a year.
Craig, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, declined to discuss the proposed cuts to veterans’ benefits until he could review the budget more closely. But Murray denounced the proposed changes: “The President’s budget means longer lines and more out-of-pocket costs for veterans in Washington state.”
The budget proposal would also affect nonprofit organizations that seek federal grants through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Community Access Program.
Spokane’s Health Improvement Partnership received funds through the program for the past four years to reach out to the uninsured and under-insured Eastern Washington.
Dan Baumgarten, executive director of Health Improvement Partnership, said the funds give community access programs incentives to improve health outcomes and make health care more affordable.
“The bigger point for Washington state is that a reduction or elimination of that funding would take away a community’s ability to coordinate and collaborate on innovations to provide health care access at the community level,” Baumgarten said.