AWRM
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Congress Cuts ATF Funding, #180665
03/05/2024 04:19 PM
03/05/2024 04:19 PM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,909
A 059 Btn 16 FF MSC
ConSigCor Offline OP
Senior Member
ConSigCor  Offline OP
Senior Member
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 19,909
A 059 Btn 16 FF MSC


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Congress Cuts ATF Funding, [Re: ConSigCor] #180681
03/07/2024 05:45 PM
03/07/2024 05:45 PM
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 24,333
Tulsa
airforce Online content
Administrator
airforce  Online Content
Administrator
Senior Member
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 24,333
Tulsa
They did cut ATF funding, a little bit, sort of. But they used some pretty fuzzy math to do so. Read the whole thing at the link.

Quote
...In their press release, House Republicans boasted that the appropriations package "utilizes the power of the purse to address the weaponization of the growing bureaucracy within the FBI and ATF." Specifically, they do this by "reversing [ATF's] anti-Second Amendment overreach…by significantly reducing its overall funding by $122 million, a 7% decrease" from 2023, as well as holding the FBI "accountable for targeting everyday Americans by reducing its overall operating budget by $654 million and cutting its construction account by 95%."

But these already-meager cuts don't involve very much actual cutting.

The FBI's salaries and expenses totaled over $10 billion in 2023, and it requested over $11 billion for 2024; the appropriations bill would grant $10.6 billion—a bit less than the FBI wanted but only about one-half percent less than last year's budget and certainly nothing approaching the 6 percent cut Republicans bragged about.

Republicans get around this with some tricky math: In a 2022 omnibus spending bill, the Bureau received $652 million toward the construction of a campus in Huntsville, Alabama. Republicans include the $652 million when touting a 6 percent cut, even though the money apportioned for salaries and expenses barely budged.

In fact, when Republicans bragged about "cut[ting] the FBI's construction account by $621.9 million"—for a whopping 95 percent decrease—that precipitous drop uses the one-time Huntsville cash as its starting point. Besides, the FBI only asked for a $61.9 million construction budget, which would have constituted a 90 percent decrease on its own.

Meanwhile, the ATF received $1.672 billion for salaries and expenses in 2023, while the appropriations bill would apportion $1.625 billion—a decrease of just 2.8 percent, not the 7 percent drop House Republicans claimed. That supposed 7 percent cut of $122 million comes from adding the $47 million cut in salaries and another $75 million cut from construction costs. The ATF did not request any construction money in its 2024 budget, so boasting that this a cut is laughable. Just like with the FBI, judging salaries and expenses in an apples-to-apples comparison yields a much more modest cut.

Any sort of fiscal discipline should be welcomed, of course. But it's not like Republicans are dedicated to pruning federal law enforcement agencies across the board....


And the DEA? It actually got an increase in funding.

Onward and upward,
airforce


.
©>
©All information posted on this site is the private property of the individual author and AWRM.net and may not be reproduced without permission. © 2001-2020 AWRM.net All Rights Reserved.
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.6.1.1