October 1, 2005: Headlines:Congress: Appropriations: Budget: Palm Beach Post: Operation Offset proposes freeze in Peace Corps Funding

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Operation Offset proposes freeze in Peace Corps Funding

 Operation Offset proposes freeze in Peace Corps Funding

"This program's long-term benefits to the federal government are limited and keeping volunteers safe is becoming more and more difficult and expensive," the committee report said about the Peace Corps.

Operation Offset proposes freeze in Peace Corps Funding

Forever changed: How this year's killer storms will alter America

By Frank Cerabino

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 02, 2005

[Excerpt]

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have become much more than just the most expensive disasters in American history. They're the new looking glass, much like Sept. 11 was, showing us a future of surprising challenges and tough choices.

They have become, in a sense, a fresh way to hash out old grievances — from tax policy to race relations to the war in Iraq.

In the long run, they could be the precipitous blows to the future of Medicare, a NASA mission to Mars and maybe even the sport utility vehicle. In the short run, they make us more than a little uneasy about our ability to handle not only the threat of terror but other hurricanes, which are predicted to occur at a heightened pace for the next 10 years or so.

Katrina and Rita may have directly affected a relatively small geographical area of America, but the disquieting aftermath of these storms has already reordered national priorities, ignited national fears and carved out another starting line to measure change.

Already, the Republican-led Congress has begun plans to use the costly hurricanes to make sweeping reductions in federal spending that will be felt across America.

The U.S. House of Representatives Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 100 members, produced a 24-page report called Operation Offset, a blueprint for cutting $949 billion in federal spending during the next 10 years.

Among their recommendations:

• Make significant cuts to Medicare by delaying the prescription drug benefit; impose co-pays on home health services; shift cost-sharing burdens more to patients.

• Limit financial support for U.N. peacekeeping operations; spend less on the Global HIV/AIDS Initiative; freeze funding for the Peace Corps. "This program's long-term benefits to the federal government are limited and keeping volunteers safe is becoming more and more difficult and expensive," the committee report said about the Peace Corps.

• Cancel NASA's Mars Initiative, which the president announced last year, to save an estimated $44 billion.

• Eliminate Department of Energy grants to state and local governments for energy conservation and water quality improvement.

• Reduce subsidies to Amtrak. "Significant savings could be achieved by ceasing to operate a few very expensive long-distance routes, which serve a limited ridership, and continuing to offer only profitable services as a business would," the report said.

• Eliminate subsidized loans to graduate students; eliminate the Leveraging Educational Assistance Program, a grant program for needy college students.

• End support for AmeriCorps, the domestic community service program. "Many participants receive a living stipend, health insurance and child care, making it more like a job than volunteerism," the report said.

• Eliminate federal anti-drug advertising aimed at young people; eliminate Safe and Drug-Free Schools grants to states. "Studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free," the report said.

• Eliminate federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities.

• Slash the budget of the Centers for Disease Control by 25 percent; eliminate the program that pays for poor teenagers to get reduced-priced contraceptives; level grants to Community Health Centers, which provide health care to the poor.

Under the heading of "Corporate Welfare," the congressional panel proposed:

• Eliminating the federal program that funds research for renewable sources of energy; scrapping the Clean Coal Technology program; and eliminating the FreedomCAR Program, which is a federal energy program to develop energy-efficient cars.

• Eliminating the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which was nicknamed "freedom fuel" and touted by President Bush during his State of the Union address two years ago as a way to avoid dependence on foreign oil. "Elimination of this initiative will produce significant overall savings," the report said. "Furthermore, private industry is better equipped to develop future fuel technologies with the free market."

In its cost-cutting frenzy, Congress would be eliminating the programs designed to ease America's dependence on crude oil as a way to pay for the damage caused by hurricanes that highlighted America's dependence on crude oil.





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Story Source: Palm Beach Post

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines;Congress; Appropriations; Budget

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