House Sends War Supplemental to Senate
CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Updated June 19, 2008 – 8:28 p.m.
By Liriel Higa and Josh Rogin, CQ Staff
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=3&docID=news-000002901005
The House on Thursday sent to the Senate a $161.8 billion supplemental spending bill that includes war funding, an expanded veterans’ education benefit, an extension of unemployment insurance and money to deal with flooding in the Midwest.
Lawmakers did so in two votes. In the first, they concurred with a Senate amendment to provide the war funding, 268-155. They then agreed to a second amendment consisting of the domestic programs and spending, 416-12.
The Senate is expected to concur with the House amendments, effectively clearing the bill for President Bush’s signature.
The final deal, struck Wednesday between House Democrats, the White House and House Republicans, came together relatively quickly. But it followed weeks of negotiations within the Democratic caucus, with the White House and between the chambers.
Both parties compromised, with Democrats adhering to the discretionary topline figure requested by President Bush, but they were able to get modified versions of the veterans’ and unemployment benefits, and a delay in six Medicaid provisions.
Echoing the sentiments of many who are eager to send a bill to the president, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, acknowledged that members of his caucus might not be fully satisfied with the compromise but “members need to just suck it up and vote yes.”
Similarly, House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey , D-Wis., acknowledged the frustration of many in his caucus that they had been unable to make more headway in stopping the war.
“What this bill does is to think about the needs of the next president,” Obey said. “And the amendment simply gives the next president enough time to think through what he wants to do and how he intends to extricate us from what I consider the dumbest war since the War of 1812.”
As they did when they first voted on the supplemental (HR 2642), Democrats split the war funding and domestic items into two votes, allowing Republicans to carry the vote for the war money, while still allowing Democrats to vote for the domestic items. The war amendment provided $165.4 billion — the Senate total, but the second amendment reduced that funding by $3.6 billion to make room for domestic items, such as $150 million for the Food and Drug Administration, $178 million for the Bureau of Prisons and $210 million to address cost overruns in the decennial census.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., said he planned to bring up the package sometime next week, but he wouldn’t promise the Senate could clear it.
“I’m not a dictator over here,” said Reid, “The individual senators will have to make a decision on what they will do on this.”
As to the steep cost of the bill — $186.5 billion in discretionary funding, as well as $62.8 billion for the veterans’ benefit and $8.2 billion for unemployment extension, both over 11 years — Boehner said, “The cost of the bill frankly is high, but it’s a price of freedom.”
Non-Appropriations Items A Challenge
Obey said Wednesday that the biggest problems had always been with the non-appropriations items, with the three last sticking points being the Medicaid regulations, a surtax to pay for the veterans’ benefit and the unemployment insurance extension.
Democrats had wanted to delay seven Medicaid regulations but settled for six.
The original House version of the war funding bill had delayed seven regulations, and a separate bill (HR 5613) had received overwhelming support when the House passed it, 349-62, as a stand-alone measure in April.
The House-passed package would not block a regulation that would limit federal funding for hospital outpatient services. Obey said the administration would not go along with having all seven of the regulations blocked so they dropped the smallest one.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the regulation would save the government $300 million over five years, which is the least of any of the seven.
Obey said that getting an agreement with the White House had been crucial to ensuring support from the Senate and within his chamber.
“If you didn’t have the White House then you wouldn’t get the Senate. Because in order to stop the ping-ponging, you’ve got to be able to say this is the last thing,” Obey said. “And the Blue Dogs justifiably were saying ‘look it, if everybody is voting their first preferences, we want to be able to express our first preference, too.’”
The fiscally conservative Blue Dogs had wanted to offset the cost of the veterans benefit with a 0.5 percent surtax on high-income earners because the benefit would become an entitlement program that would continue indefinitely.
On Tuesday, Blue Dog Dennis Cardoza , D-Calif., said he was very disappointed, though not in the party’s leadership.
“I think we were stuck,” Cardoza said. “I was going to vote for the rule no matter what because they’re doing the best they can. The problem is the Republicans in the Senate aren’t willing to pay the freight.”
Higher Costs For Veterans’ Benefit
The cost of the veterans’ benefit ended up being even more than what Democrats had proposed, with the initial cost at $52 billion. After Democrats included a transferability provision sought by the White House, the cost increased by around $10 billion.
But the unemployment benefit extension ended up with a lower cost after Democrats agreed to a GOP demand for a 20-week work requirement for eligibility and dropped an additional 13-week extension for states with high unemployment.
The final product provides an across-the-board 13-week extension for all states. That dropped the cost of the program by about $2 billion, to $8.2 billion. Obey said that lawmakers would seek the additional extension for high unemployment states on another bill, such as the next stimulus package.
“On unemployment, it’s always baffled me that the administration hung in there as long as it did in opposing an extension because I think that was a huge loser for them,” Obey said.
Senate Spending Scrapped
House and Senate Democratic leaders acknowledged that many of their priorities, such as money for Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Byrne law enforcement grants, had to be dropped.
“We’ll continue to fight,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif. “It’s not something we could accomplish in this bill.”
Pelosi suggested that the several domestic spending items that were jettisoned from the bill could be part of a second supplemental measure this year, focused on domestic needs.
Indeed, at a Senate Appropriations Committee markup Thursday, Chairman Robert C. Byrd , D-W.Va., indicated that Congress would not stop efforts to get additional funding. “I have consulted with the House, and with Senate leadership, and I have every expectation that the committee will meet again to consider a second supplemental,” Byrd said.
The Senate ended up giving up more, having provided $10 billion more in discretionary spending than the House in its version.
But for the most part, senators seemed resigned to accepting the deal reached between the House and the White House. Appropriator Sen. Patty Murray , D-Wash., one of the staunchest defenders of the Senate’s prerogative to influence the supplemental, said even she supported the House package.
“At this point, I assume that we have gotten a much better deal that anyone expected and it’s a good deal for all of us,” said Murray.
The bill also does not include a provision that would have cut the price of birth control pills and devices at university health clinics and Planned Parenthood centers that had been included in the Senate version.
The provision sought to undo part of a 2006 deficit reduction law (PL 109-171) that squeezed a total of $38.9 billion in savings from a variety of programs, including federal student loans, Medicare and Medicaid.
That law removed university clinics and private birth control clinics from the list of entities eligible for “nominal” pricing under the Public Health Service Act (PL 78-410) — a law enacted in 1944 and revised numerous times since then — which outlines a series of federal health program partnerships with states, localities and nonprofit schools, among other provisions.
Obey said Thursday that he had no problem with the provision but that the White House had indicated it would draw a presidential veto.
No Withdrawal Provisions
To the disappointment of anti-war lawmakers, but the surprise of few, the final bill does not include a timetable for troop withdrawal. It does, however, retain language prohibiting permanent bases in Iraq. It also would require Iraq to match State Department and USAID reconstruction aid dollar-for-dollar.
Another provision that would have required the Bush administration to get congressional approval for any status of forces agreement or mutual defense pact with Iraq was included until Wednesday afternoon but then stripped from the bill, said House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Chairman John P. Murtha , D-Calif.
Murtha said he would keep pushing for it, possibly on the annual fiscal 2009 Defense appropriations bill.
David Clarke and Catharine Richert contributed to this story.
First posted June 19, 2008 1:19 p.m.
CQ © 2008 All Rights Reserved | Congressional Quarterly Inc. 1255 22nd Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037 | 202-419-8500