News Release

Washington, DC – When the Senate Budget Committee adopts its guidelines for the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budget tomorrow, Idaho Senator Mike Crapo expects several will benefit Idahoans. Crapo, a member of the Budget Committee, said among the areas of interest are:

• Funding for 1500 new border patrol agents to increase border security. An increase of $2 billion above the President’s request for additional border security infrastructure, communications and equipment improvements.

• Elimination of the President’s request to further constrict the home oxygen payment system without considering the impact on patients dependent on oxygen assistance. Crapo is Chairman of the Senate COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) Caucus.

• $250 million for the Department of Energy to begin the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) research efforts at the Idaho National Laboratory focusing on plutonium reprocessing and recycling.

• New language provides budget flexibility for the extension of payments to counties that lose revenue-sharing payments from National Forest and some Bureau of Land Management lands.

• Increases education funding to the states which would amount to an additional $2 billion per year overall through 2011. • A “spending enforcement trigger” to enhance the protections in the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 that would instill stronger across-the-board fiscal discipline when general fund revenue is projected to contribute more than 45 percent of Medicare’s total spending.

“We remain on track to reduce the federal deficit in half by 2009 as we build in restrictions to slow the increases in mandatory spending. Up to now, entitlement programs, which account for nearly two-thirds of the federal budget, have experienced uncontrolled growth. This is the biggest threat to our long-term fiscal health and putting some controls in now will lessen the risk of very difficult choices later.”

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