CDRLF Impacted by Budgetary Discipline

WASHINGTON – NCUA’s Community Development Revolving Loan Fund was no exception to the programs that the federal government is looking to scale back in the face of a record high federal deficit. According to NCUA Director of Governmental and Congressional Affairs Cliff Northup, the Office of Management and Budget had asked the agency cut its request for the CDRLF by $50,000 for fiscal year 2006. “The OMB asked everybody to cut back a little bit and we figured we could live with that,” he said. NCUA’s appropriation request was set at $950,000 for grants from the CDRLF with two years to hand out the funds, while the loan program received no new funding. Northup emphasized that NCUA already has about $13 million to loan out since demand has been low over the last few years in the low interest rate environment. Typically, NCUA has requested about $1 million for the CDRLF. The Central Liquidity Facility was left untouched in the request at $1.5 billion, matching the president’s budget. The request for the CLF’s administrative expenses were up slightly from $310,000 last year to $323,000, Northup said. Though the CLF funds usually are not used, they still need to be accounted for in appropriations, he explained. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees are still working out whether and how to reorganize the subcommittees, Northup added. On Feb. 7, he delivered the appropriations requests to the current subcommittee with jurisdiction, the Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies Subcommittee. The committees are discussing whether to eliminate that subcommittee, among others, and divide the responsibilities up among the remaining subcommittees. One of the many proposals on the table would put NCUA’s programs in the Treasury Department’s appropriations package, but nothing final has been set, according to Northup. He said it could be a week or so before anything is set in stone, including the possibility of leaving the subcommittees as they presently stand. [email protected]