Re: dera funding

[gkripke@Essential.ORG]

Posting from Gawain Kripke <gkripke@Essential.ORG>
Reply-To: Gawain Kripke <gkripke@Essential.ORG>

>From Gawain Kripke, Friends of the Earth

The Senate Defense Supplemental Spending (and cuts) package is supposed to
go the the Senate floor for a vote today. DERA gets hacked by $300 
million in the bill. Despite concern by a number of Senate offices, I 
doubt there will be a serious effort to remove the cut.

I propose that we make a focused effort on the conferees (the members of 
the House and Senate who will meet and negotiate the differences between 
the House and Senate bills (the House, you will remember passed a $150 
million cut to DERA).

We should also remember that this whole scenario will return in just a 
month or two when the Congress turns to the fiscal year 1996 budget. 
There are rumors of a DERA budget cut down to $1 billion or less. We 
could be witnessing a radical budget-driven transformation of the DERA 
program shortly.

Even if we lose this round, it's important that we make noise so the 
budget cutters know that cutting DERA is not painless.