Clinton told State will face more budget difficulties

“Madam Secretary, like last year, we are faced with an extremely difficult budget environment.  We will almost certainly receive an allocation that is below the amount requested by the President, and getting a bill to his desk will require difficult choices,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Senate Appropriations cardinal in charge of the State budget.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) said at a separate hearing that the budget “must be prioritized to meet requirements of budget austerity.”

{mosads}The August debt-ceiling deal set an overall discretionary spending cap of $1.047 trillion, an increase of more than $1.043 trillion this year. This level of spending assumes that $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts do not go into effect next January. Congress must act to avoid those cuts.

Foreign aid is the least popular category of federal spending, and the Senate has shown a willingness to decrease the State budget in order to increase funding elsewhere in the budget compared to Obama’s requests.

Leahy said he has trouble with the administration’s request of $4.8 billion for Iraq operations, including for a giant embassy there.

Clinton said the department is in the process of “right sizing” the Iraq mission.