Cutbacks may loom, but N.M. has friend at table

Sen. Tom Udall’s appointment last month to the Senate Appropriations Committee — the panel that directs billions in federal spending — was good news for New Mexico, and happened at a time when some were starting to despair over the state’s lack of congressional clout.

After all, over the past four years, New Mexico lost a combined 66 years of tenure in the Senate with the retirements of Sens. Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman. Their replacements, Udall and Sen. Martin Heinrich, are both in their first terms, and Heinrich, a freshman, is so new in that chamber he doesn’t even have a permanent Senate office yet. The state’s three-member House delegation has just one representative (Republican Steve Pearce) with a decade of experience and the 1st District, Albuquerque-based representative, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, is brand new.

So, Udall’s new seat on the appropriations committee — announced at a time of severe federal budget constrictions and potentially devastating spending cuts — came as a huge sigh of relief to New Mexicans. No one can reasonably expect Udall to pick right up where former Sen. Pete Domenici — a legendary appropriator for New Mexico — left off, both because Udall doesn’t have much seniority on the committee yet and Congress has greatly curtailed the use of earmarks in spending bills.

Last week, we got our first glimpse of Udall in action on the panel. The committee on Thursday held its first full committee hearing in a long time. The hearing examined the potential effects of the sequester, or draconian spending cuts that will start to go into effect at the end of the month if Congress doesn’t take action to stop them.

During his limited speaking time, Udall made a forceful case for how “damaging” the cuts could be for federal-dependent New Mexico and especially Sandia and Los Alamos nuclear laboratories, the state’s military bases, public education many poor people.

“Sequestration threatens damaging cuts for New Mexico’s national labs, military facilities and border security,” Udall said. “If implemented, those cuts will be very damaging, I believe, to our national security.

“Sequestration will also be very damaging to some of New Mexico’s most vulnerable: Children in need of a quality education, rural communities struggling with housing, and homeless veterans seeking emergency shelter,” Udall added.

Danny Werfel, controller of the Office of Management and Budget, seemed to confirm Udall’s fears about the labs if the sequester isn’t stopped.

“It’s my understanding that critical milestones will be delayed for that lab (Sandia) as a result of the sequester,” Werfel said “For Los Alamos, we are looking at $46 million cut to procurement, hiring freezes and furlough days for certain employees. So absolutely, there is significant concern across government. NNSA (the National Nuclear Security Administration), is not safe from … the impacts of sequester.”

Udall vowed a fight.

“I’m going to do everything I can if we go into this sequester to make sure that we protect these national laboratories that are real jewels,” he said.

Udall also pressed Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on the sequester’s impact on New Mexico’s military installations, especially “reduced training at Air Force bases, and the reduction of research and development at White Sands, and the Air Force research lab and similar test ranges.”

Carter didn’t have much good news on that front, either.

“In the near term you will see, in the final months of this year, a sharp curtailment of range activity and other training activities,” Carter said. “We don’t have any choice about that. We’re simply going to run out of money in those operations and maintenance accounts.

“In the long run, if the reductions in budgetary authority forecast, which in our case is around $500 billion over 10 years, not all of these facilities can survive,” he said.

Carter then said “you can’t keep the tooth if you’re not able to cut the tail.”

“Some inevitably … of these installations are going to have to be reduced,” Carter said. “Both in the near term and far term, it will have an effect on those installations. We just don’t have any choice.”

Carter and Werfel simply confirmed what anyone who is paying attention already knows. The sequester could have brutal effects on New Mexico’s workforce and economy. But at least the state has one member in Congress who has a seat at the negotiating table and a keen interest — especially with a 2014 re-election campaign looming — in minimizing the damage.

Speaking of Udall’s re-election, the senator spent this weekend in Taos with some folks from Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere who want to help in that regard. Udall hosted a “ski retreat” at the legendary — and notoriously challenging — Taos Ski Valley.

A Washington lobbyist sent me the itinerary. The schedule included a cocktail reception at a local art gallery Friday night, dinner at Byzantium on Saturday night and of course, skiing. The document didn’t say what the cost to donors was, but the invitation made clear attendees had to pay for their own lift tickets, ski rentals, etc.

Udall also got some official work done this weekend in Taos. He, Heinrich and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan hosted a public forum Saturday morning to discuss ways to protect the Rio Grande del Norte.

E-mail: mcoleman@abqjournal.com. Go to ABQjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.