Senate approves Legislative Branch bill, moves to Homeland Security

The Senate on Monday approved the $3.1 billion Legislative Branch appropriations bill, 67-25, the first fiscal 2010 appropriations bill the chamber has approved this year.

The Senate bill is about 3.3 percent more than the level provided in fiscal 2009, and provides $934 million for the annual salary and operating increases for Senate offices, the Senate Sergeant at Arms, and the other agencies that support Senate operations; $638.5 million for the Library of Congress; and $553.6 million for the Government Accountability Office.

Approval of the bill comes after the House last month approved its $3.7 billion Legislative Branch bill, which is about 6.8 percent above the amount provided for fiscal 2009. The measure includes $1.37 billion for the annual budgets of members' offices, staff benefits, the Sergeant at Arms and other offices, as well as standing and select committees. The legislation also provides $647 million for the Library of Congress, and $559 million for GAO.

The Senate appointed as conferees Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and ranking member Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and ranking member Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sens. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Jon Tester, D-Mont.

Final passage came after senators defeated an amendment offered by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., 61-31, to strike a $200,000 earmark for the Durham Museum in Omaha, Neb., from the measure.

During debate, McCain argued that he failed to see the connection with the legislative branch and providing an earmark to the Durham Museum, which he said has about $11 million in assets citing from the museum's last tax return.

"I am sure it's a fine museum," McCain said with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

He said that because Americans are suffering as a result of the economic recession, the federal government should cut back and not continue with "business as usual."

Nelson defended his earmark, noting that the funding would go toward a project of digitizing historical photographs that the museum is working on with the Library of Congress.

"It will preserve history and improve access to these priceless treasures," Nelson said, adding that "not all treasures are located inside the beltway."

The earmark also survived a point of order raised by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., that it violated parts of the Constitution. The Senate voted, 70-25, not to sustain the point of order.

An amendment offered by Coburn -- and supported by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Nelson -- that Senate expenses, such as salaries for staff, travel and office operations posted online for the public was approved by voice vote.

"The reason that spending is out of control ... is because we don't even do a good job of managing our own office budgets," Coburn said. "So ... if we are not good stewards with our own office accounts, how can we be good stewards with [the] rest of the money that is entrusted to us?"

"The one way to get this spending under control in our individual offices as well as the federal government is to make it available in a way that the American people can see it," he said, concluding, "so we can start leading by example and the American people can see and hold us accountable for how we are spending their money."

The Senate also agreed by voice vote to an amendment from Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave the nation's official "In God We Trust" motto and the Pledge of Allegiance inside the Capitol Visitor Center.

The center "includes interesting and valuable museum style exhibits about the history of the Capitol and Congress," DeMint said, but does not include the motto, which was made official by an act of Congress at the height of the Cold War, 1956, supplanting "E pluribus unum," which is in the CVC.

"Unfortunately the way the Capitol Visitors Center has been built and the way the displays have been set up, it conspicuously ignores America's unique religious heritage and the role that heritage played in the founding of the republic," DeMint said.

DeMint also sought to bring up a second amendment that would call for a GAO audit of the Federal Reserve, but Democrats blocked consideration of the proposal by claiming that it would amount to setting policy in an appropriations bill, which would break Senate rules.

DeMint pointed out other language in the measure dealing with GAO and GAO audits that the Senate parliamentarian also said constituted setting policy in an appropriations bill. After listing a few instances DeMint said, "Clearly, there is a double standard here."

The Senate on Tuesday will take up the $42.9 billion Homeland Security spending bill.

Meanwhile, the House on Wednesday is expected to take up the $22.9 billion Agriculture appropriations bill, which includes nearly $3 billion for the FDA and more than $1 billion for food safety and inspection activities.