Senate Appropriations Rescissions.

[gkripke@Essential.ORG]

Posting from Gawain Kripke <gkripke@Essential.ORG>

To Interested Colleagues
>From Gawain Kripke, Friends of the Earth
RE: Defense Cleanup Cuts

Just a quick note to fill you in on today's activity. The full Senate
Appropriations Commmittee met today to mark up an FY95 Defense
Supplemental Spending bill. Although the overall Senate package was
smaller than the House bill -- $1.9 billion rather than $3.2 billion in
the House -- the Committee approved a $300 million cut from the Defense 
Environmental Restoration Account. This cut is twice as big as the House 
cut. Very bad news.

Senator Kohl of Wisconsin raised concerns that these cuts were being made 
without an understanding of how they would impact cleanups. He reserved 
the right to revisit the issue when the bill hits the Floor of the Senate.

Please review the action alert I posted earlier. I urge those of you who 
can to contact your Senators to express your concern about this cut and to 
urge them to reverse it. A $300 million cut is nearly 1/6 of the approved 
DERA budget ($1.78 billion). 

Disclaimer: All this information is second-hand as I was not able to 
gain admittance to the hearing room (after waiting in the hall for 2 
hours.) I'm reasonably confident of its accuracy, however.