July 3, 2017 — In a vote Thursday by a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, lawmakers pushed back on President Donald Trump’s proposal to de-fund the national Sea Grant program.
The program, which is overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides approximately $1.2 million each year to roughly a dozen full-time researchers affiliated with the University of Maine.
Paul Anderson, who heads the Sea Grant program in Maine, said Thursday that a subcommittee of Appropriations that oversees funding for commerce, justice and science had voted earlier in the day to support funding the national Sea Grant program at $63 million.
If the subcommittee’s funding proposal makes it through to the final version of the 2017-2018 annual federal budget — which Congress is expected to approve by the end of September — it would keep alive a program that proponents say is vital to sustaining Maine’s $1.5 billion-plus commercial fishing industry.
“It’s way better than zero [dollars],” Anderson said of the subcommittee vote. “It’s very promising. We feel our advocacy [in support of the Sea Grant program] around the country has been effective.”
Regardless of the subcommittee’s support for the program, the chances of Trump’s proposed budget being approved without significant changes by Congress is unlikely, as several national media outlets have reported.
Congress has ultimate say over federal spending, not the president, and typically drafts its own budget proposals that then are revised through congressional committee negotiations before being approved and enacted.