Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Policy Racket

Harry Reid, Democrats launch effort to warn public of proposed cuts

Sun Coverage

Budget negotiations are usually a behind-closed-doors affair. But this month it seems, the most forceful bartering is happening in public as Democrats launch a campaign to stir up protective fervor in their home districts for the programs that would be reduced or removed altogether under the House Republicans’ budget.

Leading the way in that effort is Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who has been stressing that Congress has to get away from the numbers game of dollar-value cuts and focus on what’s at stake on the ground before lawmakers start slicing.

To do so, Reid’s been engaging in a numbers game of a different variety, taking every public opportunity on the Senate floor to call out the number of Nevadans who would stand to lose if House leaders get their way on cutting renewable energy loan guarantees (600 job-seekers), Head Start funding (hundreds of kids), housing vouchers for homeless veterans (600 veterans), job-training centers (hundreds of job-seekers), community health centers (600 health professionals), and most recently, FBI funding that goes toward fighting hate crimes.

Reid’s warning on that last category carried the most ominous tone yet of the dangers of the Republicans’ favored cuts.

“In Nevada alone there’s been identified 15 hate groups currently operating in the area, from neo-Nazis to private citizens,” Reid warned Thursday, citing statistics from a recent study on the rise of hate groups nationally conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama, where Reid spent last week participating in a re-enactment of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma.

“We shouldn’t be jeopardizing the safety and security of Nevadans on the back of law enforcement officials tasked with infiltrating hate groups ... the Republicans’ willingness to slash the FBI budget at the same time as they’re going after domestic terrorism shows their lack of seriousness,” he said.

For Reid, the line between hate and crime is a thinning one -- making the FBI’s work that much more vital in a climate where, he reminded Thursday, even his Senate campaign was charged with a call for his opponents to take up “second amendment remedies.”

“We have to be very, very careful, people have the right to say whatever they want politically,” Reid said. “They can be bigoted, too liberal, too conservative, but when it crosses over into fomenting hate ... the line has to be drawn someplace.”

The proposed cuts Reid’s been highlighting -- $133 million out of the FBI, a billion from Head Start, 2 billion from job training programs and $75 million from homeless veterans -- all have a tangible, particular resonance for the Las Vegas area.

But Reid’s public calls for relief are as much a pitch for political influence that give a view into the nature of negotiations happening behind the scenes.

Since the Senate voted down H.R. 1, there is no pending bill, meaning that lawmakers are free to draft from scratch. But Republicans are holding fast to the idea of making $100 billion in cuts -- and while Democrats for the most part consider the depth of those cuts to be “cruel,” they also, from the majority leader on down, don’t really think the White House is making a powerful enough counter-proposal to help them reclaim the political high ground.

Ten Democrats splintered off from the pack this week when the Senate was voting on competing budget proposals and refused to back the Obama administration’s program, suggesting that if the pendulum’s going to swing, it’s leaning the way of the Republicans’ end goals.

With that pressure, cuts are going to have to come somewhere, and likely from what’s already on the table unless Democrats are able to push through an alternative that draws funds out of places like oil subsidies and domestic defense spending -- Reid’s preference, but which Republicans are loath to do.

That means the best hope for saving some of these smaller programs may indeed be the stump.

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