Capital perspective.

• Author: Baker, Jason

As AUGUST RECESS is officially upon us, several important developments have occurred in the mad legislative dash before what is to become all-out campaign season for the remainder of the summer:

FY'11 Appropriations

As compared to past cycles, the FY'11 Appropriations process has gotten off to an unusually slow start. During a "normal" appropriations cycle, yearly spending bills are written during the months of April and May and are first introduced in the House in late May or early June, then closely followed by the Senate bill in late June or early July. However, because of the front-loaded first half of 2010 in both chambers on big-ticket items--including health care, tax extenders, hearings on the Gulf oil spill and a Wartime Supplemental spending bill--FY'11 regular order appropriations has taken a back seat for other legislative priorities.

After the Wartime Supplemental was passed out of both the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, they were finally able to get to work on their regular order spending bills for FY'11--including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) bill, which fund many programs of importance to NDAA, including the National Advocacy Center (NAC) and the John R. Justice Loan Repayment Program (JRJ).

FY'11 CJS Appropriations--NAC funding levels through project request (earmark):

* House CJS: $500,000 (champions: Reps. Spratt, Holt, Rothman, Bishop, Kratovil, Ruppersberger)

* Senate CJS: $250,000 (champions: Sens. L. Graham, Landrieu, Alexander, Kerry, Pryor, Lincoln, Hagan)

While NDAA is still not where it wants to be, FY'11 funding efforts for the NAC have had a better "start" than they had in FY'10. First, NDAA has more champions in both the House and Senate for FY'11 and several well-positioned champions on the Appropriations Committee, including several CJS Appropriators (Rep. Ruppersberger, Sens. Alexander and Pryor), while being mindful that no House Republicans put in any earmark requests this year. Also, we have a higher House funding level in FY'11 ($500K) than in FY'10 ($150K), so there's less ground NDAA needs to make up in the bills during conference negotiations, which by all indications will not be happening before the November elections.

Our letter-writing campaign was a major success in FY'11, with over 2400 endorsements from state and local prosecutors on letters from all 50 states--a great job by all and a special thanks to the NDAA Board of Directors and the National Association of Prosecutor...