The federal government's business year begins Oct. 1, and U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt said Wednesday that Congress is moving forward on passing a budget to run the government in the new year.
"The Appropriations Committee that I'm on, for the first time in a long time, has passed out all 12 of the appropriations bills, with significant reforms in those bills," the Republican said in a conference call, "and all of those bills were passed out of the committee generally at levels below what the government was spending last year.
"The votes were taken and the hard choices were made under the Budget Control Act, with the money that the appropriators had available."
Blunt said he's frustrated Senate Democrats don't want to debate the budget bills without adding more money for domestic programs.
"We do have the first budget in over a decade that would actually balance in 10 years," he said, "but this budget's not balanced.
"And our friends on the other side want it to be even more not-balanced than it already is - and I think that's a big mistake."
Heading the subcommittee on Labor, Education and Health, Blunt said it is "the biggest of all the appropriating committees, except for Defense. We cut spending by $3.6 billion. ...
"And then we found some more to cut, so that we could add money to the areas like NIH (National Institutes of Health) health research - that the government can do so much more for trying to solve some of these research problems than is going to be done otherwise."
Those cuts, Blunt said, included 43 duplicative or unnecessary programs not funded at all. "I think you're going to find similar things in every one of those 12 bills that the Appropriations Committee has now voted out," he said.
The Senate version of the transportation funding bill includes a renewal of the Export-Import Bank, which the Associated Press called "a small federal agency that helps U.S. companies sell their products overseas, by underwriting loans to foreign customers."
A number of conservatives have opposed its continuation as "corporate welfare."
Blunt said Wednesday, "Particularly in our state, it impacts lots of jobs, lots of small business suppliers - to Boeing, particularly - but a lot of our exporters out of Missouri use the Ex-Im Bank and would like to see it extended.
"And I would, too."
Blunt said it appears both House and Senate leaders are firmly committed to a long-term highway bill covering the next five or six years. But Congress still must figure out how to pay for it.
"We need to look for the way to fund the gap between what the gas tax will provide and what we now spend in the transportation bill," he explained. "I don't believe that this is the right time to have a federal gas tax increase. ...
"Not increasing the gas tax at the federal level makes it a more likely option (for states) to look at (raising theirs) than if there was a federal gas tax increase."
For many years, the federal highway bill has relied on income from federal fuels taxes to pay for all transportation issues.
"At the federal level, the gas tax provides about all the money that we spend on roads and bridges, but it doesn't provide the money that we spend on everything else," Blunt said. "I'd like to find a source of revenue for a six-year highway bill that provides the difference - which is about $15 (billion) to $17 billion per year."
He said the end of that period would be the time look at current and future vehicles on the road and if the gas tax is still prudent or a more fair user fee is needed.
Blunt said the budget debates, along with cyber-security and some other issues, will resume when the House and Senate get back to Washington in September, from their in-district work periods.