U.S. House Approves Spending Measure to End Dispute With Bush

Dec. 18 -- Congressional Democrats moved closer to resolving a yearlong budget dispute with President George W. Bush as the House approved a $515 billion bill that adheres to the administration's spending limits.

The White House signaled it may accept the legislation if the Senate adds Iraq war funding when it considers the bill, probably later today.

The House voted 254 to 153 yesterday to approve the measure, which ties together 11 unfinished appropriations bills. The ``omnibus'' legislation boosts spending for Democrats' favorite initiatives, funds thousands of lawmakers' pet projects known as earmarks and leaves many programs near last year's budget levels. Lawmakers also voted 206 to 201 to provide $31 billion for the conflict in Afghanistan while withholding money for the Iraq war.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said the 3,000-page bill was the best Democrats could do to shore up funding for veterans health care, college tuition aid and other priorities while meeting Bush's demand to freeze most domestic spending.

``The omnibus bill is totally inadequate to meet the long- term investment needs of the country, but it is a whole lot better than the country would have had without a Democratic Congress,'' Obey said yesterday. ``This is the best we can get given the fact that we do not have a White House that wants to put money anywhere but Iraq.''

White House

Bush issued a veto threat because of the lack of Iraq funds. Still, the administration noted ``recent progress on the substance'' of the measure, indicating that Bush may accept the legislation if Iraq funds are added by the Senate.

House Republicans said they were being forced to vote on a bill they hadn't been given enough time to read. ``This is no way to run a railroad,'' Representative Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said last night.

The bill would end months of waiting by agencies that need to find out how much money they have to spend for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The government is now being funded by a stopgap spending measure that expires Dec. 21.

Democrats said the legislation should end a prolonged dispute with the administration over their plans to spend an additional $22 billion for health care, education and other domestic programs.

Within Limits

Unable to muster the votes needed to overcome Bush's promised vetoes, Democrats first cut their demands to $11 billion before finally agreeing to his spending caps. The party attempted to put its own stamp on the budget within those limits by shifting funding to their favorite programs at the expense of Republican priorities.

The legislation provides a 4 percent boost, or about $550 million, for Pell Grants, which help low-income families send their children to college. Bush proposed cutting the program by $200 million. The National Institutes of Health would see its budget increase by $329 million or about 1 percent to $29.2 billion. The Social Security Administration would get $450 million more to contend with a backlog of disability claims. The National Endowment for the Arts would get $145 million, a 16 percent boost from last year.

Some regulatory agencies would also see increases. The Consumer Product Safety Commission's budget would grow by 27 percent to $80 million. The Federal Trade Commission would get $243 million, about 15 percent more than last year. The Securities and Exchange Commission would get $906 million, about 1.5 percent more than last year.

Cutting Republican Programs

Democrats funded the increases in part by cutting or freezing some of Republicans' favorite programs. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, an administration foreign-aid initiative, would be cut by 12 percent to about $1.5 billion. The Office of Labor-Management Standards, which audits unions, would be cut by 6 percent to $45 million. Funding for abstinence programs would be frozen at $109 million.

An Appropriations Committee summary of the legislation said it would cut funding for most types of lawmakers' pet projects, called earmarks, by 40 percent from two years ago. Obey said he didn't know how many earmarks were in the bill or how much it would spend on the projects, saying his panel has been too busy to compile that data.

Democrats added $11.2 billion in so-called emergency spending, which is exempt from the administration's budget caps, for veterans' health-care programs, border security, to rebuild a collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, heating subsidies for the poor, aid to low-income mothers, drought relief and various foreign aid and State Department programs.

Democrats dropped provisions, opposed by Bush, that would have loosened restrictions on federal aid to international groups that perform abortions and tightened rules regarding how much federal contractors must pay their employees under the Davis-Bacon act. Lawmakers also dropped provisions that would have blocked a Jan. 18 executive order issued by Bush designed to make it harder for federal agencies to issue new business regulations.