Budget deal eliminates funds for high-speed rail

WASHINGTON -- Congressional negotiators have agreed to eliminate funding for high-speed rail and trim community policing grants to $200 million in the current fiscal year.

The partial agreement on a fiscal 2012 budget also will provide $2.63 billion for disaster recovery grants.

The agreement covers three of the 12 spending bills that will pay for government operations this fiscal year. Since Oct. 1, the government has been operating on a stopgap spending bill that expires Friday.

Among the departments covered in the deal are Agriculture, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation.

The deal offers a first look at how the deficit agreement reached over the summer — setting a $1.04 trillion ceiling on federal spending — will affect agencies.

"We did well on some things and not so well on other things,'' Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday.

Schumer said he and other supporters of high-speed rail will try to revive funding in a transportation reauthorization bill that will move as separate legislation.

Although there will be no new money to develop high-speed rail along the Northeast Corridor or from New York City to Buffalo, Amtrak will receive $1.4 billion, with $681 million targeted for capital improvements.

The budget deal requires Amtrak to impose overtime limits on employees and bars it from offering discounts over 50 percent from normal peak fares.

Overall funding for the Transportation Department will increase by $4.1 billion to $17.8 billion, including a $515 million increase for transit. The $8.3 billion for state and local bus grants is the same as in fiscal 2011.

The community policing grants, which date back to the Clinton administration, had been targeted for elimination by House Republicans. The program received $586 million in fiscal 2011.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said she was disappointed at the reduced COPS funding, but relieved the program survived.

"There's cuts to all programs and the funding levels are lower, but I'm please with some of the programs that we maintained,'' Gillibrand said. She said she "gratified'' agricultural disaster recovery grants will be funded.

Victims of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee will be able to compete with other disaster victims around the nation for the recovery grants, but several members of the New York delegation said the funding is an improvement over the original House proposal.

Republican Rep. Chris Gibson of Kinderhook said he lobbied for agricultural disaster relief money after the original fiscal 2012 Agriculture appropriations bill contained no funding for the emergency conservation program or the emergency watershed protection program.

The budget agreement announced this week includes $318.6 million for the two programs. Gillibrand estimated New York will receive $40 million.

Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of Ulster County, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, also lobbied for disaster relief funding.

The budget deal preserves money for the Women Infants and Children nutrition program and school breakfast and lunch subsidies. It also includes provisions sought by Republicans to halt new regulations covering school menus.

Congress will vote later this week on the deal and on another stopgap measure that would extend financing for other government agencies through Dec. 16.