Statement from Dr. Kathryn Sullivan on NOAA’s FY 2014 Budget Request

April 10, 2013

While the economy has shown signs of recovery over the past year, continued fiscal uncertainty and tight budgets mean that government agencies, like so many families and businesses across the country, still face tough choices. At NOAA, we’re working to fulfill our core mission of science, service and stewardship and balance investments in current and future programs and services.  

Americans in all 50 states and territories have come to rely on NOAA’s products and services on a daily basis. Across all of NOAA, our employees and partners work day in and day out to foster scientific discovery, support economic vitality, and protect our planet’s resources for future generations.  

NOAA provides the environmental intelligence that helps citizens, businesses, and governments make smart choices. Just as every citizen depends on NOAA for weather information, so, too, do businesses rely on NOAA’s services. The fishing and shipping industries count on NOAA’s nautical charts and information about tides and currents before heading to sea. Farmers depend on our long-range forecasts and information about the drought to inform decisions. The entire country relies on NOAA’s observations and products to keep goods moving safely and efficiently through our ports.

While we still face significant challenges and an uncertain budget environment, the fiscal year 2014 budget request shows that we have listened to our stakeholders, exercised the necessary strong fiscal discipline and worked hard to make the right investments for the whole of NOAA. This year’s budget request of approximately $5.4 billion aims to: 1) ensure the readiness, responsiveness, and resiliency of communities from coast to coast; 2) help protect lives and property; and, 3) support vibrant coastal communities and economies.

Ready, Responsive, and Resilient Communities

Last year’s onslaught of severe weather events caused widespread damage and devastated families and businesses. These losses highlighted the need for communities across the nation to become more ready, more resilient, and more responsive.

One recent example is Hurricane/Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy (Hurricane Sandy).  Hurricane Sandy demonstrated the value NOAA brings to society, as the whole agency mobilized to help the public prepare for, respond to, and initiate recovery from the storm. In the weeks prior to Hurricane Sandy, NOAA satellites and observing platforms provided the vital data needed for our forecast enterprise to predict the path and intensity of the storm and all its impacts. Once Hurricane Sandy passed through the Northeast, NOAA worked side-by-side with Federal, State, and local agencies to aid the area’s recovery. Our ships surveyed ports and harbors so that maritime commerce could resume. Our aircraft re-mapped the coastal zones, speeding the flow of aid to damaged communities and homeowners.  Our environmental response teams responded to oil and hazmat spills and assessed environmental damages and debris.  Our recovery work continues: NOAA’s coastal expertise, technical tools and information - such as coastal inundation products, maps, and storm surge modeling capabilities - are helping communities rebuild in a manner that is smarter and safer.

NOAA is the only federal agency with operational responsibility to provide critical and accurate weather, climate, and ecosystem forecasts that support national safety and commerce, and to protect and preserve ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes resources.  

This budget allows NOAA to deliver forecasts and warnings that can be trusted, provide services in a cost-effective manner, continue to promote preparedness and resilience to weather-related impacts, and improve the economic value of weather, water, drought, and climate information.  

Environmental Intelligence

Americans rely on satellite observations every day. NOAA’s environmental observations are the backbone of our global earth observing system and provide the information needed to provide a holistic picture of our planet from the depths of the oceans to the surface of the sun. The data supplied by NOAA satellites are critical to the full breadth of NOAA services and drive our ability to increase community and ecological resilience from the local to national level, now and into the future.  

NOAA missions, from issuing accurate weather forecasts to researching climate change, depend on this integrated suite of observing systems. NOAA’s satellites provide critical data for forecasts and warnings that are vital to every citizen and to our economy as a whole. They provide warnings for severe weather, enable safe air, land, and marine transportation, and even contribute directly to life-saving rescue missions. In addition to their key role in weather prediction, NOAA’s satellite observation suite also provides other benefits such as monitoring coastal ecosystem health to tracking migratory movements of endangered species and monitoring solar eruptions.  

Vibrant Coastal Communities and Economies

A healthy marine environment provides significant economic benefits to our nation. NOAA is the primary federal agency responsible for enabling and promoting the sustainable, safe, and efficient use of coastal resources and coastal places. NOAA plays a critical role in fostering the vitality of the growing coastal population and a productive economy by supporting sustainable resources that benefit industries, jobs, and provide services that make businesses more efficient and safe. Our investments in the management of vital marine resources ensure these resources will contribute to thriving communities and their economies well into the future. Whether it’s supporting science-based stewardship of living marine resources or supporting sound decision-making for human, ecological, and economic health, NOAA’s science enhances our understanding of our planet’s marine and coastal ecosystems. This budget provides key investments to support sustainable fisheries, protected resources, habitat conservation and restoration, coastal science, and research and development opportunities to protect and preserve our environment for future generations.

NOAA touches each and every community across the United States. Our employees are your colleagues, neighbors and friends.  NOAA and its employees work each day to maximize U.S. competitiveness, enable economic growth, foster science and technological leadership, and promote environmental stewardship.  This budget makes the right investments for NOAA while maintaining our commitment to delivering the services, stewardship and science America needs.

Dr. Kathryn Sullivan
Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere
and Acting NOAA Administrator

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House says no to mandating balanced federal budget (AP)

WASHINGTON – Rejecting the idea Congress can't control its spending impulses, the House turned back a Republican proposal Friday to amend the Constitution to dam the rising flood of federal red ink. Democrats — and a few GOP lawmakers — said damage from the balanced-budget mandate would outweigh any benefits.

The first House vote in 16 years on making federal deficits unconstitutional came as the separate bipartisan "supercommittee" appeared to be sputtering in its attempt to find at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions to head off major automatic cuts. The lead Republican on that panel said members were "painfully, painfully aware" of its Wednesday deadline for action and would work through the weekend.

The House voted 261-165 in favor of the measure to require annual balanced budgets, but that was 23 short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.

Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the proposal, arguing that such a requirement would force Congress to make devastating cuts to social programs.

Most Republicans favored the measure, but there were prominent exceptions.

Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party's point man on budgetary matters, agreed with GOP colleagues that "spending is the problem." But he added that "this version of the balanced budget amendment makes it more likely taxes will be raised, government will grow and economic freedom will be diminished."

Likewise, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., said lawmakers should be able to find common ground without changing the Constitution, and he expressed concern that lawsuits filed if Congress failed to balance the budget could result in courts making decisions on cutting spending or raising taxes.

In all, 235 Republicans and 25 Democrats voted for the amendment, four Republicans and 161 Democrats opposed it. The other two Republicans voting no were Justin Amash of Michigan and Louie Gohmert of Texas.

Later in the day, the top Republican on the deficit-reduction supercommittee indicated no deal was near but efforts would continue through the last weekend before Wednesday's deadline.

"We are painfully, painfully aware of the deadline that is staring us in the face," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas. "When we have something more to report, we will report."

With the national debt now topping $15 trillion and the deficit for the just-ended fiscal year passing $1 trillion, supporters of the constitutional amendment declared it the only way to stop out-of-control spending. The government now must borrow 36 cents for every dollar it spends.

"It is our last line of defense against Congress' unending desire to overspend and overtax," Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said as the House debated the measure.

But Democratic leaders worked aggressively to defeat it, saying that such a requirement could force Congress to cut billions from social programs during times of economic downturn and that disputes over what to cut could result in Congress ceding its power of the purse to the courts.

Even had it passed, the measure would have faced an uphill fight in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The House passed a similar measure in 1995, with the help of 72 Democrats. That year, the measure fell one vote short of passing the Senate.

Constitutional amendments must get two-thirds majorities in both houses and be ratified by three-fourths of the states to take effect. The last constitutional amendment ratified, in 1992, concerned lawmaker pay increases.

The second-ranking Democrat, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, voted for the amendment in 1995 but said the situation has vastly changed since then. "Republicans have been fiscally reckless," he asserted, saying the George W. Bush administration would not cut spending elsewhere to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, major tax cuts and a Medicare prescription drug benefit.

"A constitutional amendment is not a path to a balanced budget," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. "It is only an excuse for members of this body failing to cast votes to achieve one."

The measure on the floor Friday, sponsored by Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., mirrored the 1995 resolution in stating that federal spending could not exceed revenues in any one year. It would have required a three-fifths majority to raise the debt ceiling or waive the balanced budget requirement in any year. But Congress would be able to let the budget go into deficit with a simple majority if there was a serious military conflict.

The Republicans' hope was that the Goodlatte version would attract more Democratic supporters, and the "Blue Dogs," a group of fiscally conservative Democrats, said they were on board. But there are now only 25 Blue Dogs, half the number of several years ago when there were more moderate Democrats, mainly from rural areas, in the House.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who is not a Blue Dog member, said he was supporting the amendment because "there's an infinite capacity in this Congress to kick the can down the road. ... We are going to have to force people to make tough decisions."

But other Democrats pointed to a letter from some 275 labor and other mostly liberal groups saying that forcing spending cuts or higher taxes to balance the budget when the economy was slow "would risk tipping a faltering economy into recession or worsening an ongoing downturn, costing large numbers of jobs."

Democrats also cited a report by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimating that, if there is not an increase in revenues, the amendment could force Congress to cut all programs by an average of 17.3 percent by 2018.

The amendment would not have gone into effect until 2017, or two years after it was ratified, and supporters said that would give Congress time to avoid dramatic spending cuts.

Forty-nine states have some sort of balanced budget requirement, although opponents note that states do not have national security and defense costs. States also can still borrow for their capital-spending budgets for long-term infrastructure projects.

The federal government has balanced its budget only six times in the past half-century, four times during Bill Clinton's presidency.

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