Delta caucus cancels annual event in D.C.

WASHINGTON — For the past seven years, members of the Mississippi Delta Grassroots Caucus have taken an annual pilgrimage to the nation’s capital to press federal lawmakers to support programs that benefit the Delta.

This year, with Congress deadlocked on major issues, the group decided it just wasn’t worth it.

“Until we get past the election, we’re not going to get that anything done,” said Lee Powell, the group’s Washington-based director. “It seemed pointless.”

Instead of being a crowd of about 100 meeting with lawmakers and administration officials over a three-day conference as they had done in the past, this year the group held a stripped-down news conference in the Capitol on Wednesday to thank Arkansas’ two senators, Democrat Mark Pryor and Republican John Boozman, for their successful efforts to block spending cuts to the Delta Regional Authority, a federal-state agency that makes economic development grants in the Mississippi Delta region.

They also praised the senators for working to block a requirement that homeowners in flood zones purchase federal flood insurance, even if they are protected by levees.

A few reporters and a handful of Senate staff members were in attendance.

Instead of meeting in Washington, the caucus plans a conference in West Memphis in October, and has signed up more than 120 participants, according to Lee Powell, the group’s director.

Powell said it would save the group money to hold the event in the region. And it will pare costs for participants and whoever foots their bill.

“We don’t want them to shell out that money if the prospects for a constructive dialogue weren’t that great anyway,” Powell said. The group didn’t even begin the process of planning a trip this year, he said, because he didn’t sense any enthusiasm among members for going.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Boozman and Pryor stood together at a lectern and championed the potential of bipartisanship, and then retreated to their corners over a disagreement on Senate tactics.

“People are putting the election ahead of the general welfare of the country,” Pryor said, as he blamed Republicans for launching a record number of filibusters, which delay a final vote on legislation.

Shortly before the meeting, a veterans jobs bill stalled in the Senate. Democrats blamed Republicans for blocking the bill, and Republicans said they were not allowed enough of a chance to offer amendments during debate.

Boozman responded that under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, legislation has often skipped the regular committee process and Republicans are denied the opportunity to offer amendments.

“That’s simply unfair,” Boozman said.

One of the people who didn’t go to Washington, Dumas Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sammye Owen, said she’ll attend the West Memphis conference in October instead.

Any opportunity to sit “faceto-face” with elected officials is worthwhile, but the lack of activity in Congress and the expense of the trip made it a hard sell.

Owen, who has taken several trips to the Nation’s capital with the caucus, already made a Washington trip in February, when she and 50 others from the region participated in the Delta Leadership Institute, a Delta Regional Authority program.

“I’m not sure anything could have been accomplished by a trip to Washington this year,” she said.