June 19, 2008: Senate Set to Clear Supplemental

Senate Set to Clear Supplemental

CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION June 19, 2008 – 9:45 p.m.

By Josh Rogin, CQ Staff

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=3&docID=news-000002901365

The Senate is set to bow to the House in their long battle over whose plan for the supplemental spending bill will reach the president’s desk.

The House on Thursday evening approved its latest version of the measure (HR 2642), which would provide $161.8 billion in war funding, an expanded veterans’ education benefit, an extension of unemployment insurance and money to deal with flooding in the Midwest.

Senators from both parties had fought hard to include domestic spending of about $10 billion above President Bush’s stated limit and had approved a version with that level, 75-22, last month.

But after weeks of negotiations and with the military running short of money, Senate Democrats reluctantly endorsed the deal that House Democrats finally struck with the White House and GOP leadership, potentially ending the back and forth of the bill.

House Democratic leaders used a procedure that sent the measure to the Senate after two votes but without a final vote on the overall package.

The House concurred with a Senate amendment that would provide the war funding by a vote of 268-155. A second amendment that would provide the domestic spending was adopted, 416-12. The revised package was then automatically sent to the Senate to be cleared.

The parliamentary maneuver allowed Democrats opposed to the Iraq War to vote against the military funding but in favor of the unemployment benefits and other domestic spending.

Disappointed Senators Will Likely Go Along

Although Senate Democrats were disappointed that many of their priorities did not make it into the final House version, they were realistic about the need to support the bill now and fight for their items later.

“When time is used as leverage against you, sometimes the other side wins,” said Sen. Ben Nelson , D-Neb., referring to the House’s eleventh-hour dealmaking, “It’s not everything we were looking for, but we’re happy that the funding for military operations will be taken care of.”

The administration officially endorsed the House package Wednesday in a statement of administration policy.

“We urge both the House and Senate to immediately pass this bipartisan agreement,” the White House Office of the Press Secretary said in a statement.

The Senate’s Democratic leaders said Thursday that they would bring the House package to the floor next week and expressed cautious optimism that it would clear that chamber.

“I’m not a dictator over here,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., who supports the bill. “The individual senators will have to make a decision on what they will do on this.”

But many Senate Democrats said they would fall in line and allow the bill to clear without much objection. Many touted additions that were included over administration objections, including a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits and the largest expansion of veterans’ education benefits since World War II.

“At this point, I assume that we have gotten a much better deal than anyone expected, and it’s a good deal for all of us,” said Patty Murray , D-Wash.

Although the Senate’s Republican leaders have not commented yet on the spending package, they were expected to follow the White House’s lead.

The House dropped various items that had been in the Senate bill, including $1billion for a low-income home energy assistance program, $490 million for Byrne law enforcement grants and $451 million for the Federal Highway Administration’s emergency relief program.

But the measure still contains a modest amount of funding for domestic discretionary spending, such as $150 million for the Food and Drug Administration for food and medical product safety, $178 million for the Bureau of Prisons for incarceration costs, and $210 million for cost overruns for the decennial census.

The long list of scrapped items, many of which had been added during a Senate Appropriations Committee markup in May, prompted several Senate Democrats to call for a second supplemental bill this year focused on domestic needs.

“I have every reason to believe the committee will meet again to consider a second supplemental,” said Appropriations Chairman Robert C. Byrd , D-W.Va.

Reid, Murray and Richard J. Durbin , D‑Ill., endorsed the idea of a second supplemental, although none could give any specifics about when or how such a bill would materialize.

Even Senate Republicans were irked by the House’s unilateral decision to scuttle Senate priorities.

“It seems that the House has taken out of the bill whatever they want, and we’re going to take it that way,” complained Pete V. Domenici , R-N.M.

But in the end, the approaching deadline for completing the bill before the military runs out of money for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the Senate to go along.

“No one likes this process,” said Byron L. Dorgan , D-N.D. “But the plain fact is we’re coming to the edge of the cliff here on time, in terms of passing something.”

Lack of House-Senate Coordination

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., defended her chamber’s measure, arguing that the bill’s inclusion of several non-requested items represented a victory for Democrats.

”You don’t do everything in one bill,” Pelosi said. “It is important for us to have a bill that will be signed because we have to get the job done.”

House Appropriations Chairman David R. Obey , D-Wis., who led the negotiations over the measures, acknowledged that the lack of consensus between the House and Senate contributed to the tortured path between the chambers.

“The problem, I think, is that a number of people on both ends of these issues preferred to chew their cud more than once,” Obey said. “And so we ended up the House sending a vehicle over to the Senate; the Senate added everything but the kitchen sink to it, sent it back; then people decided they wanted to express their first preferences all over again.”

The bill also includes $1.2 billion in food aid, $374 million to help support international peacekeeping missions, $220 million for international disaster assistance in places such as Myanmar, and $390 million to fight international narcotics trafficking.

The bill would give $8.8 billion for State Department and foreign operations through June 2009.

The bill would bar any permanent bases in Iraq and require that any money for Iraqi reconstruction be matched by the Iraqi government dollar-for-dollar.

The total cost of the bill is $186.5 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2008 and 2009, as well as $62.8 billion for the veterans’ benefits and $8.2 billion for the unemployment extension, both over 11 years.

“The cost of the bill, frankly, is high, but it’s a price of freedom,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio.

Liriel Higa, David Clarke and Chuck Conlon contributed to this story.

Supplemental likely to pass Senate

By Manu Raju

TheHill.com

Posted: 06/19/08 02:12 PM [ET]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/supplemental-likely-to-pass-senate-2008-06-19.html

The long-awaited emergency spending bill will likely pass the Senate and end the Democrats’ last big fight over Iraq with President Bush, Democratic leaders signaled Thursday.

While the leaders said they could not predict what would happen when the Senate takes up the measure next week, they declared victory since the White House reversed course and has agreed to allow billions of dollars of new domestic-spending provisions to be added to a pending House bill. Initially, the White House insisted that the bill be restricted to funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The deal puts aside $165 billion to fight the wars through the beginning of the next presidency. As part of the deal, the administration had to give up ground on its opposition to adding some domestic spending to the package.

In turn, the Democrats had to agree to drop demands for some programs, including a $1 billion low-income heating assistance initiative and state and local law enforcement grants. Also, they were forced to eliminate language calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, falling short of 2006 campaign promises to end the unpopular war.

House leaders reached the deal with the White House Wednesday night, and are expected to approve the measure Thursday, ending several weeks of a bitter stalemate between the White House and congressional Democrats.

Senate Democrats praised the package and its inclusion of a $52 billion expansion of educational benefits for veterans under the GI Bill, the postponement of six Bush-backed Medicaid rules and a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance for all states. The Democrats claimed that the 75 senators who supported a much broader domestic spending package in May prompted the shift from the White House.

“Look at the progress that’s been made,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Thursday. “It’s going to get over here, we’re going to take it up — exactly how, I don’t know just yet.”

Reid would not say whether he would seek to limit amendments to the package, saying he would first discuss the issue with his conference. He said he supports the domestic package and opposes the war funding, but added, “That doesn’t mean that it won’t pass.

“I’m not a dictator here, and I’m going to meet with my caucus and we’re going to decide what we’re going to do,” Reid said.

Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), a member of Democratic leadership, hailed the breakthrough of including the GI Bill, which was authored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and strongly opposed by GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and the White House.

“I am very proud that today we are on the verge of passing the GI Bill,” Murray said. “If I would have told any of you two months ago that we were going to be able to get a supplemental bill above and beyond what the president was asking for, to include the GI Bill, I don’t think you would have believed me.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the majority whip, said the Senate would try to move the bill quickly but added it was unclear how his conference would react to the deal.

“Those to me are amazing victories when you consider the weakened position we were in last year,” Durbin said of the domestic spending provisions.

The White House last year insisted that Democrats not include spending above the president’s requested levels, and Democrats were forced to drop their push in order to keep the government running.

Reid signaled Thursday that the supplemental would likely be the last spending bill approved this year since White House budget director Jim Nussle has said that Congress should not exceed the president’s budget in its 12 annual appropriations bills.

“I don’t think he should be waiting … to get these bills because he’s unwilling to work with us,” Reid said. “We’re having to deal with Nussle, who should be muzzled.”

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