Negotiators struggle over $7 billion designation in Defense bill
As conferees work toward completion of the fiscal 2005 Defense appropriations bill, negotiators must resolve how to designate $7 billion in funds that would bust the Senate's overall fiscal 2005 discretionary spending cap of $814 billion as set by last year's budget resolution.
In order to get around the cap-made necessary in the absence of a fiscal 2005 budget resolution, which would have increased the Senate's fiscal 2005 allocation to $821 billion-Senate Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, classified about $7 billion of the Senate's $416 billion Defense bill as emergency funds, which are not subject to a budget point of order on the floor. That $416 billion total includes $25 billion for a contingent emergency fund for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, requested as an amendment to the administration's fiscal 2005 budget submission and not subject to the same budgetary rules.
If the emergency classification remains for the additional $7 billion in the underlying $391 billion fiscal 2005 defense budget, Stevens can avoid potential points of order when the conference report reaches the floor next week-but that poses problems for House appropriators. The House deemed a fiscal 2005 spending cap of $821 billion, also excluding the $25 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. House appropriators simply included the funds within their $417 billion fiscal 2005 Defense bill above the subcommittee allocation of $391 billion, as opposed to making it available upon request by the administration-another conference issue to be worked out.
If the $7 billion remains classified as emergency funding in the conference report, that technically frees up an additional $7 billion for House appropriators for a total of $828 billion in fiscal 2005 spending, a prospect that has House GOP conservatives wary. "It's a problem," a House Republican aide said, although conservatives in either chamber are not expected to hold up swift completion of the Pentagon funding measure.
If Defense spending bill conferees remove the emergency designation, that removes $7 billion from the remaining funds within the Senate's overall fiscal 2005 cap of $814 billion, unless Stevens classifies those dollars as emergency spending. But non-defense emergency funds over the cap can be struck from fiscal 2005 spending bills through a 60-vote budget point of order. Given tight budgetary constraints combined with emergency needs Stevens wants included in this year's spending bills-including $700 million to outfit post offices around the country with equipment aimed at detecting anthrax and other potential bio-terror hazards, to be added perhaps to the fiscal 2005 Transportation-Treasury bill-Senate negotiators might be hard-pressed to find a way around removing the Defense emergency designation.
Defense conferees are already haggling over details of $95 million in emergency aid for the war-torn Darfur region of the Sudan, approved as part of both House and Senate bills; $50 million added by the Senate for security at the party nominating conventions in Boston and New York; and $685 million for embassy security needs in Iraq and Afghanistan as added by the House.