Category: Spring 2006 Newswire
Veterans’ Lobby Michaud’s Committee for the 2007 Budget
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 – Veterans’ organizations made their pitch Thursday for more money for the Veterans Affairs Department to the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, on which Rep. Michael Michaud (D-2 nd ) serves.
The Bush Administration has asked for $80.6 billion for the fiscal year 2007 for the department, an $8.8 billion increase over this year. The department’s health care budget would rise 11.3 percent next year to $34.3 billion.
Many Democrats, including Rep. Bob Filner of California, complained that this fell far short of fulfilling veterans’ needs. Another $4 billion would be needed, Filner said, to satisfy veterans’ needs across the country.
Michaud said that his office was looking into what the proposed budget will mean for Maine.
“My big concern is that they’re moving monies around. We’ve heard that there is going to be a shortage in a lot of divisions,” Michaud said. “And we’re currently keeping a close eye on what it means to Maine and making sure that we have plenty not only to adequately fund programs but also to try to get the clinics .. up and running as well.”
Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) said he was not worried about any shortfalls in the 2007 budget. “What I’ve learned in the years in which Republicans have been in the majority, whatever the benchmark is that we set, the Democrats will have the theme that it isn’t enough,” he said. “It isn’t just with veterans’ benefits; it could be with education, it could be with Medicare, it could be with Medicaid.”
During the hearing Buyer said that Michaud was “a very valued member of the committee” and was in sharp contrast to Filner, whom the chairman occasionally bickered with during the hearing.
“Mr. Michaud is sincere and he’s engaging and he is substantive,” Buyer said.
Among the shortfalls, according to some critics, are a plan to impose a $250 enrollment fee on higher-income, non-disabled veterans seeking Veterans Affairs medical benefits. The administration also wants to increase the co-payment on prescription drug benefits from $8 to $15 per monthly prescription.
According to several witnesses at the hearing, the VA estimates that these charges would discourage 200,000 veterans from seeking health care coverage for the first time and force more than one million current enrollees to drop out.
Michaud, in a statement after the hearing, called the enrollment fee and the co-payment plan “a non-starter” and said he will oppose the higher charges.
He also said he was “concerned with potential funding shortfalls at facilities around the country. Last year, many facilities, including Togus [Medical Center], were forced to borrow, put off hiring or tap into capital accounts to maintain medical services. And ultimately, Congress had to pass emergency supplemental funding for the VA of over $1 billion.” “It is my hope that the VA has given us a full account of their needs this year, so we will not experience a similar budget mess this year that would require another supplemental,” Michaud said in the statement.
The majority of the groups that testified Thursday, including the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Association of Service Disabled Veterans, were in favor of mandatory spending for the VA. Though Bush is seeking an increase for 2007, that is not always the case, and the VA budget is subject to cuts, like most other agency budgets, according to witnesses.
Another major issue that the committee will be tackling is a reform of the GI Bill, which helped to expand the middle class after World War II by paying for veterans to attend college . However, the bill does not give the same benefits to members of the Reserve and National Guard. With a large number of reservists and National Guard members fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, this is becoming an issue that both sides of the aisle are getting behind. Both Michaud and Buyer said they support the extension of benefits…
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Bass Agrees with Sununu on Earmark Reform
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15-Rep. Charles Bass, who joined a bipartisan group of congressmen to announce support Wednesday for earmark reform, said it is a complex process and people should not "expect results overnight."
"There are not simple answers," said Bass, who endorsed an earmark reform bill sponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
"What we need to do is come up with a plan, a compromise plan, quite frankly, that will satisfy the need," Bass said. "The need is to find accountability, transparency and disclosure while at the same time not hamstringing the ability for Congress to do its business."
This is the second bipartisan bill on earmarking that New Hampshire lawmakers have endorsed over the past week. This bill is similar to the Pork Barrel Reduction Act Sen. John Sununu and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., introduced last week.
An earmark is money Congress designates for a particular project, like a bridge. Some earmarks are being written into bills after they have passed both chambers and have gone to a joint Senate-House conference committee to work out differences in the bill's two versions.
Bass said any legislation to change the earmark system must have four elements: the sponsors of the earmarks must be named, the earmarked projects must be identified, they must not be added to bills that come out of a conference committee and they must be included in the legislation itself, not simply in the accompanying committee reports.
"I think Sununu's bill has the four elements that I support; I think Mr. Flake's bill lacks the signature part," Bass said of the absence from the House bill of the requirement that lawmakers who seek to earmark money must publicly identify themselves and explain the earmark's essential governmental process.
Although he said that his opinion might differ from some of his colleagues, Bass said he believes that there is nothing wrong with "a member of Congress expressing his or her support for priority spending within his or her district."
However, he said, "the key is to make sure that the public understands what they're doing, and if they don't like it, then it can be removed."
"I have always advocated for my constituents," Bass said, "but I've always published, in fact boasted about, the work that I do because I think it's important." He said he was not ashamed of any of the money he has earmarked in the past, including community development block grants for areas that he believed needed help.
"There's nothing wrong with having everybody do what I do, which is to publish and support and be willing to actively promote, and be willing to stand on the merits of those requests that I made," he said.
The problem with the earmarking process is that most people do not know how it works, Bass said. This included him until recently, he admitted. "Six months ago I didn't understand how the earmarking process worked exactly; you know, all this business about top line versus bottom line," he said. Now that he understands, he said, he is endorsing reform.
Joining Bass and Flake at the press conference on their bill were Democrats Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Dennis Cardoza of California.
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Congressional Committee Hears from Whistle-blowers
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 - How would your boss react if you blew the whistle on fraud, abuse or waste within the workplace? Instead of celebration, what if your company retaliated with harassment and intimidation, forcing you to either step down from your position or retire?
For government employees working in national security agencies, this type of retaliation could be restricted under legislation Congress is considering.
"Whistle-blowers in critical national security positions are vulnerable to unique forms of retaliation," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, said at a hearing Tuesday. "Those with whom we trust the nation's secrets should not be second-class citizens when it comes to answering their rights to speak truth to power."
Shays, vice chairman of the Government Reform Committee, chairs its National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations Subcommittee, which heard from a number of witnesses Tuesday.
Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said he was harassed and intimidated by his superiors for disclosures he made to the 9/11 Commission. Shaffer, who said he was deployed twice to Afghanistan to collect sensitive intelligence information about terrorists, said he revealed that more could have been done by the government "to maximize the intelligence and promise" of certain security programs. As a result, he said, he was threatened with rank demotion.
"I became a whistle-blower not out of choice, but out of necessity - necessity to tell the truth," Shaffer said at the hearing.
The other witnesses on the panel recounted similar stories.
Russell Tice, a former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency, said he was subjected to an "emergency psychological evaluation" and was covertly followed by FBI agents after revealing to a Defense Intelligence Agency's officer that he thought a co-worker was engaged in espionage.
"My Kafkaesque journey from that time on involved surveillance by the FBI," Tice said. He said a National Security Agency security officer was sent to his home "to threaten me in person with dire consequences if I talked to the press."
"I was not given substantive options for reporting the injustices that were inflicted upon me as a whistle-blower," Tice said.
Each witness agreed that the current legislation protecting whistle-blowers - The Whistleblower Act of 1998 - is not sufficient.
The proposed House bill would clarify the scope of protected disclosures by a federal employee to include "any lawful disclosure an employee or applicant reasonably believes is credible evidence of waste, abuse or gross mismanagement," according to the bill titled The Federal Employee Protection Disclosures Act.
Government employees "go to the media as a last resort," Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
"There are not enough protections in place right now for whistleblowers to be protected going through the normal channels," she said. The committee is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free legal assistance to journalists.
Public Hearings Scheduled Over Nuclear License Renewal
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled a public meeting March 8 in Plymouth over Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station's license renewal.
The meeting, the first scheduled in Pilgrim's multi-step renewal process since it filed its application on Jan. 27, is intended to explain the license renewal process.
"The [commission] staff will give a presentation to the public," said Diane Screnci, a public relations officer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Region 1 office, "so that they'll understand what our review entails and what opportunities they have to take part in the review."
Time will be given during the presentation for public comment, she said.
The commission considers two main issues when a plant is up for review: the expected environmental impact and the safety aspects of running the plant for an additional 20 years.
"The staff is going to specifically look at how the plant has set out a plan for managing how components within the nuclear plant age over time," said Scott Burnell, a public affairs officer at commission headquarters in Washington.
In renewing a license, the commission does not review issues of security or of where a plant disposes of its spent fuel. These issues are reviewed much more frequently by local, regional and national organizations, according to Burnell.
"It doesn't make much sense to consider these issues over a 20-year period," he said.
For part of the process, the commission will seek public comment, particularly on environmental issues around the Pilgrim plant, including the impact of the plant's cooling system on marine life and endangered species.
"There also will be an opportunity for the public to request a hearing, and there is a time frame associated with this," Screnci said.
The hearing, if requested, would be conducted by the commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel.
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Web site, the hearing request period would begin sometime in mid-March and end in mid-June.
The second public meeting on the Pilgrim Plant renewal application will focus heavily on environmental issues, Screnci said.
"We call it our scoping meeting," she said, "where we see what the 'scope' of the power plant's impact will be on the environment. It's a meeting to take comments from the public to see what should be included in our environmental review."
This meeting will be held between late June and early July if all proceedings run according to schedule.
The renewal process could take up to 30 months to complete, said David Tarantino, a spokesman for Pilgrim.
The power plant's current license to operate is set to expire June 8, 2012.
The March 8 meeting is scheduled for 7-9 p.m. at Memorial Hall in Plymouth.
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Simmons, Connecticut Officials Question Homeland Security Funding
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14-Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., has joined local officials from Connecticut in criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for the criteria it uses to decide which areas receive federal funds.
In a Feb. 9 letter to Undersecretary for Preparedness George W. Foresman, Simmons said that focusing heavily on population does not work when awarding federal homeland security money.
Simmons said he would oppose all funds for the Urban Areas Securities Initiative, the program through which federal grants are awarded to urban areas across the country that satisfy the department's criteria.
Simmons is chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment.
Spokespersons for the department did not respond to queries on the urban areas grant program and the criteria the department uses to judge which cities get the federal grants.
But in a Jan. 3 news release, the department said it intends to focus more on risk assessment in allocating funds in the current year.
Simmons called into question the population qualifier-200,000 minimum population-to be considered for any of the urban security grants. In his budget for fiscal year 2007, President Bush proposed $838 million, an increase of $80 million, for urban areas grants while calling for cuts across the board in antiterrorism grants.
"New London is not a large city, but it is located in a developed area," Simmons said in an interview Tuesday.
"When you talk about risk-based, you're talking about more than population," Simmons added.
Simmons stressed that New England cities, unlike those in some other areas of the country, do not grow beyond their boundaries, so that their urban areas are really composed of several cities and towns.
He said that he would not vote for more funds for the Urban Areas Securities Initiative without changes to the legislation.
"We ain't voting for this thing if it's not changed; it's just that simple," Simmons said. "I want [the administration] to know that I will not support their formula for allocating homeland security dollars. I will not support it," Simmons added.
Reid Burdick, New London's emergency management director, said in an interview Tuesday that the New London area is at higher risk than some areas with larger towns because of its large older population and because it is a major traffic hub.
The New London metropolitan area has a population of more than 200,000 and includes within its borders a submarine base, a submarine builder (Electric Boat), and two active nuclear power plants in Waterford.
"It's too bad that neither the state nor the federal government really doesn't recognize us" as a high-risk area, Burdick said.
Richard Brown, New London's city manager, said that he has been pleased with the state's homeland security agency but has been disappointed with the federal government's homeland security policies.
"On the federal level, I think the funding allocations are grossly inadequate," Brown said. "There is a tendency, it seems, at the federal level, to fund simply some very large urban areas or have a base formula that is so generic and population-based that there are some very wide open areas that seem to have no risk at all that are being funded, perhaps on a higher per capita basis then some of our urban areas."
Brown added that New Haven, the only Connecticut area that ever received urban areas grants, has been dropped from the program and has not received such federal money since the 2004 fiscal year. This issue was addressed by Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on which Lieberman is the senior Democrat.
"The factors [the Homeland Security Department] uses to determine risks have changed from year to year," Lieberman said in a Jan. 3 statement, "meaning one year a city qualifies for funding, as New Haven did in 2004, and the next year it doesn't qualify, or a city is deemed at high risk one year and the next year it is not. This is not the way to help states and localities systematically develop the essential capabilities they need to keep citizens safe."
Deputy Commissioner Wayne Sanford of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security said that all funds from the federal government under the urban areas program go directly to the urban areas, bypassing his office entirely.
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Sununu Wants Taxpayers to Be Able to Track Their Money
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9-Taxpayers may have a better idea of what their money is being used for if Congress approves a new bill Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., is sponsoring.
"People in small towns and big towns and cities in New Hampshire are paying a good deal of taxes," Sununu said in an interview after a press conference announcing the bill. "This is their money that is being sent to Washington, and we want to make sure that across the whole budget it reflects our country's priorities."
The bill, which Sununu is co-sponsoring with nine other Senators, including Arizona's John McCain, aims to reduce the number of earmarks inserted in bills during the conference process.
An earmark is money set aside specifically for a particular project, like the building of a bridge. Some of these earmarks are being written into bills after they have passed both chambers and have gone to a joint Senate-House conference committee to work out differences in the bill's two versions.
Sununu's bill, called the "Pork Barrel Reduction Act," would prevent last-minute additions to legislation to fund special projects.
"Any taxpayer wants to make sure that there's a good process in place to disclose how money is being spent," Sununu said. The bill would enable members "to identify what priorities certain members of Congress are pushing for and to know that we're doing everything possible to minimize egregious earmarks."
The aim of the bill, Sununu said, is to shed more light on the process so members know when earmarks are introduced, what they are specifically funding and who is sponsoring them.
"I don't think any legislation can get rid of earmarks entirely, and members of Congress should always have the opportunity to push for priorities in their home state or their district," Sununu said.
Earmark reform has been a sensitive issue for many members who believe they are judged by constituents on the amount of money that they get appropriated for their home state.
Sununu said he disagrees with that belief. "What voters care most about is that you have a voice that reflects the state well, that you're willing to stand on principle, that you do your homework and you cast a good thoughtful vote," he said at the press conference. "I think those are the things that matter most."
This bipartisan bill, introduced by two Democrats and eight Republicans, comes at a time when there is a strong congressional divide between the Democrats and Republicans.
"At the very least, I think there's a recognition of real common ground here, recognizing that reducing the number of requests is helpful to everyone, makes for a better process," Sununu said. "I think those are the kinds of changes that everyone in Congress can support because they make for a better process."
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Maine College Republicans Visit the District
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - Maine College Republicans have come to Washington in force this weekend to take part in the Conservative Political Action Conference. The 104 Maine students represent the largest delegation at the conference.
"It's really a great opportunity for our members to get to know each other and also other College Republicans from throughout the country," said Nate Walton, the chairman of the Maine College Republicans for the past seven months.
Walton said Maine brought such a large delegation to the Capital partly because the organization is strong but also because 2006 is a crucial election year back home, with Democratic Gov. John Baldacci in a tenuous position and Democrats controlling the state House of Representatives by only a single vote..
The delegation includes students from all over the state, from Bowdoin to Husson to the University of Maine at Presque Isle. All 104 students got a quick meet-and-greet and a photo on the Capitol steps with Maine's two Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Collins echoed Walton's desires for a party switch in both branches of state government.
The American Conservative Union hosts this annual gathering, the largest of conservative activists in the country. The Maine students will get to sit through speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney, United Nations Ambassador John Bolton and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.
It is a cliché that college students are predominantly liberal, and in most colleges liberal thinking dominates the student body and the faculty. Walton said that such liberal dominance has served only to make his organization stronger.
"I think that one of the reasons that our organization is so strong is that we are constantly being challenged on views and being questioned about them," he said. "It really makes our members know what they believe in very strongly, and we're here to fight for those values."
Shanna Moody, a 20-year-old physical therapy student from Husson College, said she had some problems last semester with her ethics teacher, whose teachings leaned to the left a little too much for Moody's liking.
"She would just make comments like she contrasted Republicans and vegetarians," Moody said. "I was like, eh, what does that mean?"
Husson's administration is fairly GOP friendly, according to Jared Grover, the vice president of the Husson College Republicans. Grover said the college's president, William H. Beardsley, is very supportive.
"Our president is a strong conservative, a nice guy, really encouraging, and he really backs us," said the 27-year-old LaGrange native. "Every time I talk to him he asks how things how are going and what we're going to be doing."
According to members of its College Republicans organization, the University of Maine at Presque Isle is less supportive of conservatives on campus. Though the chapter received financial aid from the student senate for the trip to Washington, the more liberal students often pose a challenge.
"Our signs are taken down and Democrats obviously hate us, but you know that's natural," said Tyler Clark, a 20-year-old Easton native who is majoring in business management.
Clark joked that despite some problems with campus Democrats there had not been any "death threats or anything."
"Not yet," interjected Brandon Marquis, the vice chairman of the Presque Isle College Republicans and Clark's hometown friend.
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Mayor Moccia Goes to Washington – Demands Earmarks
By Adam Kredo
WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 - Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia and Police Chief Harry Rilling came to Washington on Wednesday to urge the Connecticut delegation to set aside federal money for many city projects.
"Any help, earmarking, we could get would be great," Moccia said on Wednesday during a meeting with Sen. Joseph Lieberman's staff. "Norwalk really has been shortchanged."
An earmark is money designated for a specific project in a specific state or locality.
When asked how he felt about lobbying for earmarks and federal grants in a reform-oriented climate, Moccia said: "It's a necessity; you have to do it. If you don't apply, the money's not gonna fly."
The mayor also met with Sen. Christopher Dodd's staff and with Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4 th ).
During the meeting with Lieberman's staff, Moccia pulled from his bag two thick binders containing grant information and stressed the need for full funding of phase two of the Norwalk Harbor dredging project.
Phase one cost $1.7 million, and phase two will require an estimated $7 million, Moccia said. He said that as part of the second phase contaminants caused by salty oils that drain into the harbor from the I-95 bridge will be cleaned and removed.
Calling it a "catch-22," Moccia said that, at this point, the Connecticut Department of Transportation has refused to provide filters for the bridge, and this allows contaminants to continually enter the harbor. Without money for phase two, the city will not be able to comply with the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection's requirements, such as removing 35,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the harbor, the mayor said.
"I don't know where we are" with the dredging project, he said, although both the city and the Lieberman staff agreed that the project, as one of the senator's aides said, "can't afford a delay."
Moccia requested $200,000 to improve what he called an "obsolete" security system at the South Norwalk train station,. The money also would include new traffic lights, bikeways and road improvements
The city is requesting more transportation earmarks then it has in the past, according to Paul M. Pimentel, a Shays aide.
"Brownfields and dredging are very important," Moccia said, "but in the transportation area, obviously, we need some help."
The mayor said that even though Norwalk is the state's sixth-largest city, it continues to get "shortchanged" on federal grants. In particular, the Environmental Protection Agency has denied Norwalk grants several times in the past, Pimentel said.
Addressing environmental brownfield grants for South Norwalk, the mayor expressed concern about the area's current status.
"We seem to have gone from an industrial state to a service state," Moccia said, as he explained why Norwalk needs such grants. Brownfield grants would allow the city to identify and, if sucessful, clean up areas of South Norwalk. "It's very important for us to assess and clean up these sites," Moccia said.
If grants are obtained, and the clean-up effort succeeds, Moccia said, he will follow through with his plan to rezone some of the older areas that were once inhabited by light industry. According to the mayor, this would pave the way for either affordable housing or new types of light industry. Moccia said his main goal was to "make the area attractive to new people."
After the meetings, Moccia admitted his inexperience with the lobbying process, calling himself a "novice mayor" and saying: "I've only been in office for 10 weeks. I'm still learning a little bit, but I'm trying."
He also cited the fact that Norwalk lacks a grants coordinator as a reason for his naïveté.
Overall, though, despite his inexperience, the mayor said he was "just having fun."
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Bass Solicits Residents’ Concerns
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 -If you have had a problem with the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program, Rep. Charles Bass wants to hear about it.
"With the advent of the new prescription drug benefit plan, there are bound to be problems during the start-up phase, and that's what we're experiencing now," Bass said Wednesday in announcing that he wants New Hampshire residents who have experienced problems with the new program to contact his office.
"I'm simply trying to make sure that I provide the best possible constituent service to my constituents, and I've established a mechanism for them to talk to us and get their problems solved if there's any way that we can do it," the congressman said in a telephone interview.
The mechanism he referred to is a new form linked on the front page of his Web site, http://www.house.gov/bass, encouraging New Hampshire residents who have encountered problems with the drug plan to fill out the form. Residents are asked to provide basic contact information and a detailed explanation of the problems. A link is also provided to a help desk Bass set up last year to answer basic questions about the new program.
Residents are also welcome to call, write, fax, or e-mail the Bass. "I'm not suspecting that this is going to have to go on indefinitely," Bass said, "but during this transition period for the next six months I want my office doing everything it possibly can to make sure that the transition is smooth and responsive."
Bass said he hopes residents do not run into problems with the new plan, "but I certainly hope if they do, they won't hesitate to call, and we'll do what we can to address them," he said.
Bass stressed that this service to New Hampshire residents was not very different from the work that his office performs on a daily basis, except that "we know that right now there are particular issues associated with Medicare Part D, and we just want to make sure that people know that we're yet another resource that they can call on if they have a problem."
If residents contact him with problems, the next step, Bass said, is that he will call the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency in charge of the program, and "try to advocate on their behalf to try to get it straightened out." Bass said his office would perform a similar service for someone who was missing a Social Security check or could not sign up for veterans' benefits.
"I guess the only difference is that we understand that there is potentially a concentration of issues here," Bass said. "We want constituents to know that we're going to have somebody in our organization that's going to be responsible for making sure that all these requests get handled in a timely fashion and hopefully resolved satisfactorily."
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Bush Budget Could Force Tough Decisions
WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 - Under President George W. Bush's proposed budget for the 2007 fiscal year, some Massachusetts communities could be forced to make tough decisions about which programs they can afford.
In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Rep. John W. Olver (D-Amherst) said the President's budget would cut federal funds for successful education programs, including college assistance and adult vocational programs.
"The President vows to invest more money in education in his State of the Union address, but then turns around and cuts education by $2 billion in his budget delivered to Congress just a few days later," Mr. Olver said. "It's mind-boggling."
Jack M. Wilson, president of the University of Massachusetts, said he was pleased with Mr. Bush's proposals to invest in scientific research but disappointed with the cuts to educational financial aid, which he said is key to making higher education "affordable and accessible to everyone."
"I'm happy on the one hand because I think that the focus he has picked out and the investments in research are sorely needed and will make a very positive impact on our university," Mr. Wilson said, "but the cuts to financial aid will have a very negative impact on our university and on our students."
Mr. Bush's proposed reductions to Medicare and Medicaid are "very shortsighted," said Daniel Moen, president of Heywood Hospital in Gardner.
"The kind of cuts that he is talking about to the Medicare and Medicaid programs will be difficult for any hospital to handle," Mr. Moen said. "A good percentage of our volume is Medicare and Medicaid patients, so even small reductions there can have a dramatic impact on hospitals like us."
Mr. Moen said that the cuts are eroding hospitals' financial positions and the services they provide over the long run. Not only is Heywood Hospital important for its services, he said, but it's also important to the economy in north-central Massachusetts.
If Heywood, which is a community-based, not-for-profit hospital, is squeezed further financially "it will impact how successful we are bringing in new technology, physicians and replacing an aging physical plant," Mr. Moen said. "All can be compromised if the hospital is put in a bad situation financially."
Mr. Olver said that for those who need it most, quality affordable health care "takes a back seat in this budget proposal. Huge cuts in Medicare come in the wake of problems with the new Medicare prescription drug program."
"The budget is replete with bad choices for Americans living in or near poverty - like terminating the Community Services Block Grant, which is geared to providing economic self-sufficiency for struggling families," Mr. Olver said.
The Community Services Block Grant program was cut completely in the President's proposed 2006 budget, but Congress continued funding the program. The 2007 budget proposal again calls for the program's elimination.
David Streb, Fitchburg planning coordinator, said the city goes through a planning process to determine what its needs are and uses funds from the Community Services Block Grants to meet those needs.
"For the second year in a row our funds have been cut," Mr. Streb said. "It's becoming increasingly difficult to administer the program."
Mr. Streb said that the city is left to decide on a year-to-year basis which programs will receive funding.
"We're faced with the difficult decision on what recommendations to make with the limited funding we have available," Mr. Streb said. "We have to choose between programs that prevent violence in the schools, homeless mentoring programs and overtime drug enforcement for the police."
According to Rep. Olver's office, the President's proposed funding for Community Oriented Policing Services would be reduced by 80 percent, from $509 million in 2006 to $102 million in 2007.
The Community Oriented Policing Services program was initiated under President Clinton as part of his program to put 100,000 more police officers on the street. The program provides grants to police departments that offer compelling plans and proposals for innovation in law enforcement.
"I think in the '90s the federal government spent a really small amount of money that brought a tremendous amount of stability," said Edward Cronin, the Fitchburg chief of police. He said that in the 1990s, police officers became better at preventing crime under the program, and that plans to create a regional crime map would be hindered by the proposed cuts.
Mr. Cronin said since 2002, when the national emphasis shifted from street crimes to terrorism, the Fitchburg police department has been back to pre-1990 levels of manpower, before the Community Oriented Policing Services program began.
"I think that homeland security is very important and needs to be targeted," Chief Cronin said, "but also think that real security starts on the streets, and right now we've been totally abandoned by the Bush administration."
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