House panel proposes steep funding cuts for agencies

Calling the cuts “broad and deep,” the committee's chairman, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), said he instructed each subcommittee to go line-by-line to weed out and eliminate wasteful or excess spending. The cuts "will affect every congressional district, but they are necessary and long overdue,” Rogers said.Likely to face major resistance by Senate Democrats and the White House, the blueprint outlines a 9 percent total cut on discretionary spending on non-defense and non-security programs compared with last year, according to Federal Times.        On the higher end, funding for the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development departments and several smaller agencies would be cut, while financial services and general government would be slashed by 13 percent. According to the report, the precise cuts, from agency to agency, should become known next week. That’s when Republicans release a spending bill to carry the government through the rest of fiscal 2011, George Behan, spokesman for the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), told Federal Times. “At the moment, we’re concerned about what the implications will be,” he said.